Volvo’s Chinese owner Geely expands into Europe and Southeast Asia, undeterred by trade war

Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, a leading mainland Chinese carmaker and owner of Volvo, vowed to press on with its expansion into global markets undeterred by the US-China trade war, company officials said on Wednesday.

The company would start to sell its Lynk & Co brand cars in eastern Europe as early as next year, and had already set up the framework of a feasibility study on cooperation with Malaysian carmaker Proton to enter Malaysia, said Gui Shengyue, chief executive of the Hong Kong-listed subsidiary Geely Automobile Holdings.

“Our expansion into the Southeast Asian market this year and the European market next year will not be affected by the trade war,” said Gui.

Geely Holding president An Conghui projected that production capacity and sales of the Lynk & Co models, co-developed with Volvo last year and produced in Belgium to target young buyers in the European markets, would grow substantially in 2019 after the company resolved the problem of engine shortages in January.

Of the total 571,577 Volvo vehicles produced in 2017, only 14.2 per cent of them, or 81,504 units were sold in the US, which also represented a 1.5 per cent decline from the previous year’s volume. Geely’s Chinese plants produced 21 per cent of the total vehicles.