Continental has signed a long-term purchase option agreement for additional real estate for the company’s Hefei tyre plant in China.
A Chinese delegation team made up of 11 high-ranking representatives of various authorities and committees travelled to the company’s headquarters in Hanover, Germany to conclude their agreement.
The delegation was led by the Deputy Mayor of Hefei, Han Bing, who signed the Memorandum of Understanding, as did Burkhardt Koeller, Chairman of the Management Board of Continental Reifen Deutschland GmbH and Head of Controlling at Continental’s Tyre Division.
“In line with our long-term growth strategy, Vision 2025, we have been very systematic in expanding production capacities at our Hefei plant in China,” said Koeller at the signing ceremony. “This purchase option for additional plots of land puts us in a position to almost double the amount of space available to us, which brings us in valuable long-term latitude in our planning,” he added.
Continental’s Hefei tyre plant opened in 2011 and since then, the company has continuously expanded its annual passenger car and light truck tyre production capacities on the land it already owned to a current level of approximately five million units.
With this additional investment of EUR250 million, the stage is set for further expansion phases that will take annual output as high as 14 million units. At the same time, expansion of bicycle tyre production to 13 million units a year by 2025 is underway.
In all, since the original groundbreaking ceremony, Continental has already scheduled investments of more than EUR500 million at the Hefei plant.