TPT September 2011

G lobal M arketplace

› BHP Billiton started pumping oil from its first new well in the Gulf since the Obama administration lifted the deepwater drilling ban. The Australian natural resources group also said it had begun begun drilling a second well; › Exxon Mobil Corp, the largest US oil group, reported three discoveries – one of them among the biggest in the Gulf in the past decade – after drilling its first deepwater exploration well since the BP spill. Automotive A big name, Volkswagen, makes a big difference to a small city in China A long-time Beijing resident, Jack Perkowski, recently has been using his blog “The China Factor,” in Forbes , to call attention to the potential of some smaller Chinese cities as factory sites. In his conviction that the rising costs of manufacturing in China should not drive foreign companies from the country, but only farther inland, he devoted his 6 June post to “China’s Tier 2 and Tier 3 Cities.” Himself a former auto parts supplier, Mr Perkowski considered in particular Yizheng, a Jiangsu Province city just a 90-minute drive from the Nanjing airport.

For setting up a factory, Yizheng – where in 1995 Mr Perkowski completed a piston ring joint venture – is held to offer important advantages over Tier 1 cities like Beijing and Shanghai with their very high wages, rents and other costs. To judge from the scope and ambition of its plans, Germany’s largest auto maker, Volkswagen AG, is similarly impressed by Yizheng, where in July 2010 Shanghai VW agreed to locate a new assembly plant. Mr Perkowski supplied some background. Volkswagen already has a considerable presence in China, where Shanghai VW currently operates three plants in Shanghai and one in Nanjing. With sales of just over a million vehicles in 2010, Shanghai VW was in a virtual tie with Shanghai GM – a unit of General Motors, of the US – to be known as China’s largest assembler of passenger cars. Shanghai VW’s plant in Yizheng is under construction, with completion slated for the second half of 2012. To accommodate VW and the 30 components suppliers who already have signed up for sites, the city fathers almost doubled the size of the zone set aside for the auto industry from 7.72 to 15 square miles. The zone is to be further expanded beyond manufacturing to include commercial and residential facilities. Phase I of the Yizheng project, which may ultimately exceed all three of VW’s Shanghai locations in capacity, will produce 300,000 vehicles (the Santana NF and Skoda) per year; Phase II will raise production by another 300,000 cars. In addition, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp (SAIC), a Volkswagen partner, may build 120,000 units per year of its first-ever branded car (the Roewe) near the main site.

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S eptember 2011

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