BMW forms Chinese production joint-venture with Great Wall

The German luxury carmaker BMW will join forces with China's Great Wall Motors Company Limited to shift part of the production of its "Mini" brand to China, the Munich-based company announced on Friday.

The German luxury carmaker BMW and China's Great Wall Motors Company Limited have signed a memorandum of understanding on the joint-venture for Chinese Mini production. [File photo: IC]

Under the joint venture, electric Mini vehicles will be manufactured in China from 2019 onwards. While production is initially scheduled to continue at Mini's traditional British factory in Oxford, BMW warned that the future of the plant was uncertain and would ultimately depend on the outcome of Brexit negotiations between the European Union (EU) and United Kingdom.

The Chinese automobile, the country's largest producer of Special Utility Vehicles (SUVs), was first reported to be discussing the possibility of a cooperation with BMW in October 2017. Both parties have now signed a memorandum of understanding, although the exact details of the joint-venture, including the exact location for Chinese Mini production and the level of investment, are yet to be determined.

Once finalized, BMW's joint-venture with Great Wall Motors, which is based in Baoding, Hebei province in north China, will already be the second such agreement with a Chinese firm after having already teamed up with the local carmaker Brilliance. China is the single largest market for automotive sales in the world.

BMW emphasized on Friday that its new partnership was complementary to the one previously entered with Brilliance and the company would hence not attempt to create a parallel Chinese sales operation for electric Mini vehicles.

Mini sold a relatively modest 35,000 out of a total of 372,000 cars in China last year. BMW intends to grow the brand's presence in China significantly in the future with the help of local partners such as Great Wall Motors and Brilliance Auto, a Chinese automobile manufacturer headquartered in Shenyang, the capital of northeast China's Liaoning province.