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Third Honda auto plant hit by China strike
by Staff Writers
Tokyo (AFP) June 9, 2010


VW unveils plans for new Chinese auto factory
Frankfurt (AFP) June 9, 2010 - European automaker Volkswagen will build its 10th factory in China as part of a long-term strategy in what is now VW's most important market, it said on Wednesday. Chairman Martin Winterkorn, who signed the contract to build a factory in Foshan, near Guangzhou, said: "We intend to double our capacities in China to three million vehicles per year by 2013/14." In April, VW announced it would boost its Chinese investment programme by 1.6 billion euros (1.9 billion dollars) to a total six billion. VW and its partner FAW-Volkswagen plan to invest about 520 million euros in the Foshan plant, which is designed to produce 300,000 vehicles per year from mid 2013 and employ about 4,000 people.

The biggest European car company, along with FAW-Volkswagen and another partner, Shanghai Volkswagen, currently has nine plants in China and makes around 20 Audi, Skoda and VW models there, a statement said. Of a total 6.29 million vehicles sold last year, the VW group delivered 1.4 million of them in China. VW has identified the country as its key market in a drive to overtake Toyota as the world's biggest automaker by 2018. The group plans to begin making electric cars there in 2013/2014, the statement said.

Japan's Honda Motor faced its third strike in a month in China Wednesday after workers walked out of an affiliated auto parts plant, with production at two assembly plants paralysed, officials said.

Local workers staged a walkout Wednesday at Honda subsidiary Honda Lock (Guangdong Guli) Co. Ltd., said a spokesman, adding that the latest strike had not impacted production in China.

"We are still not in a position to tell how many workers were on strike and why they were doing so," said the Tokyo-based spokesman, who declined to be named. "But at least that strike has not affected our main assembly lines in China."

The auto parts plant in the southern province of Guangdong produces key sets, door locks and other parts with around 1,500 employees, said an official of Honda Lock, fully owned by Honda Motor.

"Production at the company stopped from this morning," Gao Xia, a Beijing-based press officer with Honda Motor (China) Investment Co., Ltd., said, adding that motives for the strike were not available.

Earlier Honda said two of its assembly plants in China would remain closed indefinitely due to a strike at an exhaust parts maker operated by a subsidiary.

Two assembly plants run by Guangqi Honda have been closed since Monday, following the strike at the joint venture factory of a Honda subsidiary and a Taiwanese firm.

Labour leaders and managers at the Foshan Fengfu Autoparts Company, in Guangdong, were still in negotiations, said an official at Yutaka Giken, the Honda subsidiary that operates the joint venture.

"The talks are still continuing," he said.

Fengfu employs 489 workers in Foshan and supplies Honda vehicles with mufflers and other exhaust parts.

The labour dispute comes after Honda, which produces 650,000 vehicles per year in China, last week resolved a strike at its parts unit in Foshan by offering workers a 24 percent pay rise.

Honda shares plunged 2.81 percent in Tokyo trade Wednesday.

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