24.2.12
Wheelsology
Ford Motor Company and its joint-venture Changan Ford
Mazda Automobile (CFMA), today opened a new assembly plant, 'CFMA Chongqing Assembly 2' or CQ2. Home of the all-new Ford Focus, CQ2 incorporates global industry best practices to efficiently and safely produce high quality vehicles with minimal environmental impact.
"This is a very special day," said Joe Hinrichs, President of Ford Asia Pacific and Africa. "It's not every day that you open a new assembly plant. This new plant represents a decades-long investment that will transform the lives of thousands of people. Following the vision of Henry Ford to produce vehicles where they are sold, the opportunities created by this expansion help create the ability for our production team to buy the vehicles they build. This expansion will benefit Chongqing and western China for years to come."
CFMA is investing USD 490 million in CQ2, which will increase its production capacity in China by 150,000 units – to over 600,000 vehicle units overall. This is CFMA's second assembly plant in Chongqing and its third in China. With two assembly plants and engine and transmission plants already operating, Chongqing is now the largest global manufacturing location for Ford outside southeast Michigan.
The plant is ramping up production of the all new Ford Focus, and will have produced more than 150 prototypes for testing as it prepares for the market launch in the second quarter. The all new Focus is built on Ford's global C-platform, or mid-size vehicle chassis. At CQ2 and elsewhere, up to ten different kinds of vehicles will be produced on this platform, and the company will sell 2-million vehicles this year based on this platform.
"Ford is committed to China and a greener future," said Dave Schoch, Chairman and CEO, Ford China. "This new plant and the all new Ford Focus produced here are the culmination of global best practices in manufacturing and vehicle development. This is the One Ford plan in action. It's about giving our customers what they most want and value, in a cost effective and sustainable way. The new Focus is an incredibly popular and successful global vehicle and we are delighted to introduce it to China, as the first of 15 new vehicles we are bringing here by 2015. This new flexible plant will help give us the capacity to realize our aggressive growth plans for the world's largest automotive market."
Schoch and Marin Burela, President of CFMA, welcomed Mayor Huang Qifan of Chongqing in opening the Chongqing Assembly Plant 2 at a ceremony in Chongqing’s Liangjiang New North economic development zone.
The production line at CQ2 is designed for maximum flexibility, enabling it to produce six different types of vehicles. This allows the company to bring new vehicles to market faster, and test new vehicles while maintaining full production speed.
Sustainable paint shop
By maximising a wide range of state-of-the-art technologies – from re-circulating the air in the paint shop spray booths to recovering heat energy from the oven exhaust – the paint shop is able to return massive energy and environment savings.
The energy saved in the paint shop – 58-million kWh – is enough to power almost 20,000 households in a major Chinese city for a year, or to light up the entire Bund in Shanghai day and night for almost 2.5 years.
The paint shop utilizes Ford’s environmentally friendly, revolutionary 3-wet high-solids paint process, improving paint quality, depth and durability, and significantly reducing volatile organic compounds, CO2 emissions and waste.
State-of-the-art automation
The new 1-million-plus-square-metre assembly plant includes stamping, body, assembly, paint, trim and final assembly operations. The new plant is thoroughly equipped with state-of-the-art automation, showcasing Ford's best-technology global manufacturing processes and systems, including one of the world's fastest stamping presses and 116 robots in the body shop for repeatable, consistent quality.
After several years of considerable growth, Ford's joint-venture, CFMA, has established itself as one of the leading passenger car manufacturers in China. CFMA is well known in China for its high-quality cars, as well as the development and introduction of advanced environmentally friendly technologies. In Chongqing, in addition to today's now open plant, CFMA operates a another assembly plant, as well as engine and transmission plants. Additional CFMA assembly and manufacturing plants are located in Nanjing, China.
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