Hyundai's overseas plants account for over 50% of sales abroad

Hyundai Motor Co. said that its oversea sales of vehicles produced in overseas plants surpassed 50percent of total sales abroad for the first time during the first seven months of this year, the Korea Herald reported Tuesday.



According to Hyundai, out of 1.302 million vehicles which the company sold in overseas markets during January-July period, about652,000 units were made at its overseas plants, which accounts for50.1 percent of the total overseas sales and is up 4 percentage points from the same period last year.



The company said that changes are mainly due to the fall in domestic plants' output affected by summer vacations and partial strikes in July.



Until June, the vehicles produced in South Korea accounted for more than half of Hyundai Motor's overseas sales, it said.



The proportion of vehicles produced outside South Korea has risen substantially as the company made huge effort to increase its overseas production capacity in recent years. As a result, the overseas sales by vehicles produced in overseas plant reached 45.6percent last year, up from 18.8 percent in 2003, the company said.



Hyundai Motor currently operates plants in China, India, Turkey and the United States. Chinese and Indian plants both have an annual production capacity of 600,000 units each, while that in Turkish and the U.S. operations are 100,000 and 300,000 respectively.



Hyundai has two more plants under construction in the Czech Republic and Russia, and by 2011 the combined annual production capacity of Hyundai Motor's overseas operations will reach 2 million units, only 45,000 less than the production capacity of the company's three domestic plants.



Source: Xinhua