China FAW Group Corp., a major state-owned automaker, opened a plant last week in South Africa to build trucks for the local market and other countries in Africa.
The $60 million (370 million yuan) plant is in the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan municipality in the southeast South African province of Eastern Cape, FAW said.
The plant will build as many as 5,000 medium- and heavy-duty trucks a year, of which 40 percent will be sold in South Africa and the rest will be exported to other African countries.
The plant is FAW's first overseas truck production site. The company has plants in Ethiopia and Russia that assemble vehicles with kits imported from China.
FAW, headquartered in the northeast China city of Changchun, runs a light commercial vehicle joint venture with General Motors in Changchun. It also has passenger vehicle joint ventures with the Volkswagen Group and Toyota Motor Corp. in China.
