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5. Continental Group (China) Business Report FY ended Dec. 2014

Continental Group (China) Business Report FY ended Dec. 2014

New Plant

-Continental announced that the Company and HUAYU Automotive Systems Company Limited will establish Huayu Continental Brake Systems Co., Ltd., a brake production joint venture, in the Chongqing Liang Jiang New Area, China. The new plant will cover over 80,000 square meters, and will produce brake calipers, vacuum boosters, electric parking brakes, and other brake products. Investment in the first phase of the construction project is expected to reach CNY 600 million. The joint venture will hire over 600 people, and production operations are scheduled to begin in the fall of 2016. (From news releases issued by multiple sources on June 11, 2015)


-Continental announced that it will launch the third phase of its plant expansion project in Hefei, Anhui province, China. The company has already invested CNY 250 million in the Hefei Plant, and another CNY 250 million is scheduled to be invested during the third phase. Currently, the plant is able to produce 5 million passenger car tires per year. When the third phase is completed, its annual passenger car tire capacity is expected to increase to 14 million units by 2019. (From a press release on June 3, 2015)


-The Company announced the opening of its second plant in Wuhu -- Continental Automotive Interior (Wuhu) Co., Ltd., a new addition to its current manufacturing facility in Anhui Province, China. With an initial investment of EUR 33 million for land and building, the new plant will be fully operational in the first quarter of 2015. The new facility with a total land of 120,000 square meters and an initial floor space of 46,000 square meters will include production operations, R&D center, laboratory and warehousing, which will focus on the business of instrumentation and Driver HMI (Human Machine Interface). By end of 2015, around 1,500 employees will be working in the new plant including around 215 R&D engineers. And 42 production lines in total will be installed by end of 2015. (From a press release on November 17, 2014)


-The Company announced that ContiTech Division's Benecke-Kaliko Group has held a groundbreaking ceremony for its new plant in Changzhou, China. The plant will be operated by Benecke Changshun ECO Trim Co., Ltd., a joint venture between Benecke-Kaliko and Jiangsu Changshun Group Co., Ltd. The facility will produce Acella Eco, a low CO2 emissions and allergen-free material for automotive interior components. As the material meets tighter environmental restrictions on in-vehicle components, demand in the Chinese market is growing. The Changzhou facility will be Benecke-Kaliko's second production base for the Acella Eco in China, following its existing plant in Changshun. Benecke-Kaliko will invest EUR 40 million in the first phase of the construction plan, which will be the company's largest-ever investment project in China. The new plant will cover 24,000 square meters and is expected to hire 250 people. (From news releases issued by multiple sources on January 23, 2015)

-Recently, ContiTech, a division of the Company, opened its new plant in Sanmen, Zhejiang. ContiTech Power Transmission Group acquired the business of Taizhou Fuju Rubber Belt Manufacture Co., Ltd. in January this year and established ContiTech Power Transmission (Sanmen) Ltd. Covering 33000 square meters, the new plant in Sanmen is the second plant of the ContiTech Power Transmission Group set up in China. It mainly produces V-belts, V-ribbed belts and timing belts for the automotive OEM market, the automotive aftermarket and industry in general. (From a press release on December 30, 2014)

-Recently, ContiTech Grand Ocean (Changchun) Co., Ltd., the subsidiary of the Company in China, opened new plant in Hangzhou. The plant in Hangzhou is the fourth ContiTech Fluid Technology production site in China. It covered 2,000 square meters. It will produce underfloor air conditioning lines for Ford in series production from March 2015. (From a press release on November 30, 2014)

Transmission Control Unit

-The Company announced that it has produced nearly 9 million units of transmission control units (TCU) in China. Continental's Tianjin location operated by the Transmission Business Unit, which is part of the Powertrain Division, mainly produces stepped automatic transmission and double clutch transmission. The plant delivers the parts to nearby factories run by two major international automakers. The EAST, a platform specially tailored for local manufacturers, is also produced here. Prompted by the steep rise in demand for TCUs in China, Continental will be setting up a new production line in Tianjin. This line, which is specially designed for the EAST platform, will be used mainly for Chinese manufacturers. And the next generation of transmission control is already in preparation. Slated to go into series production in 2018, the new generation will also make it possible to actuate an additional electrical oil pump, for example. (From a press release on May 21, 2014)

Acquisition

-ContiTech is continuing the expansion of its drive belt business in China with the acquisition of the business of local manufacturer Taizhou Fuju Rubber Belt Manufacture Co., Ltd. The acquisition was closed in mid-January. To date, the Chinese company has predominantly manufactured drive belts for the automotive replacement business and for industry in general. In the future, ContiTech will make use of a 33,000-square meter production complex just completed at the start of the year. The plant is located in Sanmen in Zhejiang province. From spring 2014 on, ContiTech will be manufacturing mainly V-belts and V-ribbed belts for the automotive OEM market, the automotive aftermarket, and industry in general in Sanmen. (From a press release on January 23, 2014)

Contract

-The Group announced that it will mass-produce its 3.5-inch color liquid crystal instrument panels for Geely Automobile’s Borui. These instrument panels were designed based on the MCU platform concept. They will be produced by Continental Automotive Wuhu Co., Ltd., which developed these products locally for the first time. (From a press release on July 10, 2015)

Come into Operation

-The Group announced that its Tianjin Plant began producing plastic mechatronic control units for automotive transmissions. The control units are high-precision metal-plastic composites integrated with an electronic system. The technology helps reduce product weight and size and maintain high quality. (From news releases issued by multiple sources on July 20, 2015)

R&D Center

-The Group has 15 R&D centers in China.

Major R&D Centers

-Continental AG opened a new Research and Development Center for tires on the site of its tire plant in Hefei, Anhui Province, China at the end of March 2015. At the new Research and Development Center in Hefei, summer and winter tires for the APAC region will be developed and tested. The initial construction phase, on an area of around 6,000 square meters, has created capacity to machine-test some 6,000 tires a year and represents an investment volume of over EUR 4 million. Plans for a second phase are already being drawn up to generate capacity for an additional 1,000 tires to be tested. (From a press release on April 24, 2015)