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Brilliant! BMW Brilliance to Build a Second Plant in China

Probably overwhelmed with enthusiasm by the booming sales, BMW's China partner Brilliance Auto were perhaps too quick to announce that a second plant would be built in the Communist Republic to meet the solid demand of luxury cars there.

The beans were spilled by Yufei Wan, the chief of Brilliance's international trade arm, who was quoted by China Daily as also saying that the Brilliant BMW or whatever you want to call this unholy alliance wants to boost the annual capacity from around 30,000 units to 75,000-80,000.

The aforementioned source did mention though that BMW was not that eager to confirm that a second plant was being build. In fact, they said that no decision has been made on that issue.

Mr. Wan also approximated the cost of such a plant, once again without any backing from BMW.

"The specific amount of the investment has yet to be approved by the board, but a plant like this would cost 1.5 billion to 2.0 billion yuan ($220-293 million)," he was quoted as saying by the aforementioned source.

Coincidentally or not, BMW released at about the same time a list with all its facilities and related figures. China is present there with the Shenyang plant, which manufactures the BMW 3 Series Sedan, 5 Series Long Wheelbase. With around 3,200 employees, the plant managed to output 33,720 vehicles in 2008.

Speaking of production figures, Brilliance, makers of sedans, vans and light trucks, sold 285,242 vehicles in 2008 and thus ranked eighth among Chinese automakers. If you must know, the Chinese carmaker aims to sell no less than 1 million units in 2012. If you had told us a few years ago that Chinese automakers have such daring dreams, we would have laughed in your face, but since China was last year the number 1 country in the world in terms of car production, now we're not so sure anymore about the laughing part.
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