| ABB vows to invest $100 mln in local market |
|
| Wednesday,June 29,2005 Posted: 09:40 BJT(0140 GMT) China Daily |
BEIJING, June 29 -- ABB, already strong in China's power industry, has vowed to spend at least US$100 million on the local market after pouring in more than US$600 million, to drive its targeted annual business growth of 20 percent up to 2008.
The new investment will be used to expand its operations and start new engineering centres and factories, Peter Leupp, president of ABB (China) Ltd said.
A host of major expansion projects of the existing manufacturing and research centres will come online within a couple of years, to meet the swelling energy market fuelled by the world's fastest-growing economy.
The projects will be based in cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an and Xiamen, said ABB.
A new research and development centre, for instance, was set up in March in a move to "drive local innovation levels for Chinese consumers," according to the Zurich-headquartered company, and more strategically, to aid its ambitious plan of growing China into ABB's second largest market worldwide within three years, overtaking its home turf Germany.
China is currently ABB's third-largest market after the United States and Germany.
The Beijing centre is the second of its kind opened by ABB in Asia. The other research facility is in India, with others outside Asia operating in the United States and Europe.
As energy efficiency becomes one of the top issues on the government agenda, ABB is betting on the enormous business opportunities driven by China's great potential for improving energy efficiency and tapping renewable energies to generate power.
"State-of-the-art power technologies (from ABB) are available to prevent (power) outages and higher power plant efficiency and lower transmission losses are an economical and environmental imperative," Peter Smith, executive vice-president of ABB Ltd, said.
"We now have the technology (to enhance energy-using efficiency and develop renewables)," Smith said.
(Source: China Daily)
|