- Two new plants for roof systems open in Wuhan and Shenyang
- Total investments of 6.6 million euros
Webasto continues to expand its market-leading position for roof systems in China. Due to the great popularity of sunroofs and panorama roofs in the world’s most important automotive growth market, manufacturing capacities have to be expanded. For this reason, Webasto built two new plants in Wuhan (central China) and Shenyang (northeastern China). With these new factories, the company now manufactures at ten sites in China. In all, 6.6 million euros were invested. Of that amount, 2.2 million euros were allocated to the leased plant in Wuhan, which opened at the beginning of May. In Shenyang, Webasto bought property, investing a total of 4.4 million euros. The first roof systems will be officially manufactured there from the beginning of July. This year, a total of 800,000 roof systems will leave the assembly lines in Wuhan and Shenyang.
Sales in China planned to double to 1 billion euros by 2018
China is Webasto’s most important single market for roof systems. In 2013, the company’s sales there amounted to around 590 million euros. That is equivalent to 24 percent of the total sales of the Webasto Group. “Our order books for China are nicely filled,” says Dr. Holger Engelmann, Chairman of the Management Board of Webasto SE. “For 2018, we plan on generating sales of more than 1 billion euros in China.”
The share of vehicles produced in China with sunroofs or panorama roofs, which is already high, will continue to grow in the coming years. Among the foreign manufacturers in China, the percentage of cars equipped with these roof systems is more than 50 percent. Today, it is mainly tilting/sliding sunroofs that are ordered. But the trend is clearly shifting to panorama roofs, which are enjoying growing popularity. This particularly applies to SUVs. Currently, every seventh car sold in China is an SUV. For this segment, experts anticipate annual growth of 20 percent in China. Webasto expects additional growth in the sunroof segment for compact and small cars, which are primarily developed for local manufacturers.
