Showing posts with label Goldstar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Goldstar. Show all posts
Monday, August 24, 2015
Group Lotus, Proton and Goldstar sign letter of intent to expand into China.
PROTON Holdings Berhad (“PROTON”) the ultimate holding company of Lotus Group, announced that it has signed a Joint Venture (“JV”) Agreement with Lotus Group International Limited, United Kingdom (“Lotus Group”) and Goldstar Heavy Industrial Co. Ltd. (“Goldstar”) for a possible business expansion of Lotus cars in the People's Republic of China.
The collaboration seeks to accelerate the development of Lotus cars in the premium sports segment in China, leveraging on the incentives offered by the Fujian Provincial Government. Both PROTON and Lotus Group are subsidiaries of DRB-HICOM Berhad.
Signing on behalf of PROTON was the Honourable Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Chairman of PROTON and former Prime Minister of Malaysia and witnessed by Dato’ Abdul Harith Abdullah, Chief Executive Officer of PROTON.
Signing on behalf of Lotus Group International Limited, United Kingdom was Jean-Marc Gales, Chief Executive Officer and witnessed by Mr Rohime Shafie, Director of Lotus Group and Chief Financial Officer of PROTON; and signing on behalf of Goldstar was Mr Zheng Qianghui, Chairman of Goldstar and witnessed by Mr Zhai Wenliang, President of Goldstar.
Dato’ Abdul Harith Abdullah said “The JV Agreement will see the establishment of a new JV Company for the purpose of undertaking research and development (R&D) activities in the use of efficient and advanced technology.
The JV Company will then produce and sell Lotus branded passenger cars as well as provide after sales services in connection with its products in the People’s Republic of China.
“The automotive market in China is the single largest in the world today, and is still growing, therefore it is only natural for an established iconic company like Lotus to embark upon the possibility of expansion, venture into the market and seek the available opportunities, in light of the keen interest shown by the many enquiries received thus far.
It is very difficult to ignore the market and Lotus will fill the gap in providing a lifestyle alternative to the growing demands of the affluent and market conscious local community,” Dato' Harith added.
"On April 7, 2015, Lotus announced 55% increase in car sales for its 2014/15 financial year, compared to the previous year with 36 new dealers appointed during the period 2014/15.
And China has appeared to be the top key growth market for Lotus exports and is expected to grow at a very fast rate. Lotus Group is excited about the opportunities of this new Joint Venture," Jean-Marc Gales commented further.
Lotus will continue to manufacture its current range of Lotus sports cars (Evora, Exige and Elise) exclusively at its HQ in Hethel, England.
Lotus Cars aims for new SUV to be launched in 2018, along with profits and US re-entry.
British sports car maker Lotus Cars will be profitable again by 2017 after years of losing money, CEO Jean-Marc Gales said. The former PSA/Peugeot-Citroen and Daimler executive has implemented measures to cut costs while improving the automaker’s product lineup since he took over Lotus in May 2014.
But Gales said the company will not launch all-new cars until its new China-built SUV debuts in 2018/19 as he focuses on boosting sales and cashflow.
Lotus will increase sales in the short term by making changes to the current three-car line-up, Gales said. The company has added an automatic transmission to its track-focused Exige two-seater, which is close to passing the entry-level Elise as the company’s top-seller.
Gales expects 40 percent of Exige sales to be models with the automatic transmission.
The company also unveiled a facelifted version of the flagship Evora coupe at the Geneva auto show in March that will spearhead the brand’s return to the U.S. market. The Evora was the only Lotus model sold in the U.S. but was dropped for the 2015 model year because it no longer met federal crash standards.
Lotus has redesigned the Evora to meet U.S. standards and moved the mid-engine coupe further upmarket to better compete with the likes of the Porsche 911 and Audi R8. A convertible version is due next year. Gales expects the U.S. to be the Evora's biggest market.
Supplier squeeze
Gales said Lotus has stripped 10 percent from the costs out of producing cars and he plans further cut costs by switching suppliers. “We are going through our whole supply chain, gradually replacing smaller suppliers with larger ones, reducing costs and improving quality,” he said.
Last September Lotus said it was cutting 225 jobs from the 1,250 workforce at its headquarters here. The final figure was 260, Gales said.
Gales has also scaled back the work of the company’s consultancy, Lotus Engineering, a separate arm of Group Lotus that contracts engineering services to automakers and suppliers. “It used to account for half of Lotus revenue 10-15 years ago. Now it’s 10 percent,” he said. “It was a conscious decision to focus the engineers flat out on the development of our road cars.”
Gales said he does not expect the engineering side of the business to grow again until after three to four years.
Lotus said that its wholesale vehicle sales were up 55 percent to 2,015 in the financial year to the end of March 2015, from 1,403 the year before. Gales said he is targeting annual sales of 3,500 by 2016.
Lotus’s sales growth has been boosted by an expansion of dealerships. Gales aims to increase Lotus dealerships to 200 by the end of this year from 174 by the end of March.
He said that losses have been “massively reduced” in the year to the end of March compared to a loss of 65.6 million pounds ($100 million) for the year ending March 31, 2014. The year before Lotus lost 159.4 million pounds, according to figures released by the company.
Gales says that the company will show a profit in the financial year ending March 2017. “It’s something we haven’t done consistently from the car side in over 20 years,” he said.
Gales’s ambitions for Lotus are more modest than those of his predecessor, former Ferrari executive Dany Bahar, who had planned to boost Lotus's annual vehicle sales to 10,000, a similar volume to Ferrari. Bahar was fired in 2012.
Nick Gibbs
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