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China’s Foton Motors group plans to install its Brazilian headquarters in Rio de Janeiro state, where it will build a truck assembly factory that from 2015 on will initially produce 20,000 vehicles per year, the state’s secretary for Economic Development, Energy, Industry and Services announced.
Julio Bueno said that the factory’s location has yet to be determined, adding that when it becomes operational it will make Rio de Janeiro Brazil’s second pole for the automobile industry after São Paulo. The Chinese group’s factory involves an investment of 250 million reais and will create 450 direct jobs.
“The projects have grown and attracted suppliers, so we are diversifying the state’s economy, we’re trying to make the transformation industry grow even more,” Bueno said, cited by the Brasil agency.
The executive vice-president of the Chinese group’s Brazilian subsidiary, Orlando Merluzzi, said in turn that the business plan included expansion of the assembly line starting in 2018 to produce heavy and ultra-heavy trucks and to attract new suppliers to the region.
The Chinese group aims to obtain financing for up to 80 percent of the amount to invest from the Brazilian state’s Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Económico e Social (BNDES), Merluzzi said. He added that in the first two years 75 percent of the trucks produced would be assembled from parts made in China, while in 2017 the Brazilian share should rise to 65 percent.
