CIMC opens new trailer plant in China to produce reefers for US, Europe
Dec 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Bruce Sauer
View all CIMC photos and captions
CIMC headquarters is in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong. Shenzhen is also home to the company’s Shenzhen CIMC Vehicles Company (SCVC) manufacturing complex. Shown is part of the 898,000 square feet that the company has under roof
THE world just got a little smaller.
Conventional wisdom says that it's not feasible to set up a trailer manufacturing plant and sell thousands of those trailers to customers halfway around the world. But China's largest trailer manufacturer has a different idea.
China International Marine Containers (CIMC), which already has the lion's share of the intermodal container market, is implementing a plan to manufacture refrigerated trailers in China and sell them globally — particularly into North America and Europe.
The concept is similar to what the company has been doing with its Vanguard National Trailer Corporation subsidiary — but with substantially more manufacturing being performed in China.
From Vanguard's inception, when CIMC acquired the former HPA Monon trailer manufacturing complex and set up a U S production facility in 2004, Vanguard has produced its own line of dry-freight vans using steel components that CIMC fabricates and galvanizes in China. Vanguard does the rest — including the production of the aluminum sheet-and-post sidewalls, roof, and floor.
Under the new system, CIMC ships complete walls, roofs, floors, and rear door frames via container ship to the United States. Once delivered to the Vanguard complex in Monon, Indiana, the Chinese-built components are assembled into a van on the same assembly line that Vanguard uses to produce dry-freight vans. The trailers are then subsequently moved to a new CKD (complete knock-down) center that Vanguard is ramping up at the main campus in Monon, Indiana, for final assembly.
The major capital commitment, however, is the sprawling 520,000-sq-ft plant that CIMC has constructed to serve as the company's flagship facility for refrigerated trailers. The building, completed earlier this year, is just now coming on stream. With only limited production at this point, the empty areas of the facility speak volumes about what the company plans to do in the years to come.
The new manufacturing plant in Qingdao, China, produces complete walls, roofs, and floors and ships them via container vessel to the United States. It also builds complete trailers for the growing Chinese market, but the emphasis at the new plant clearly is on global production.
Eventually the plant will have two parallel assembly lines — one to produce trailers for the North American market and another that will assemble the sandwich construction that is the standard design for refrigerated trailers in Europe.
The plant is operated by Qingdao CIMC Reefer Trailer Company Ltd — a subsidiary CIMC formed two years ago to manufacture refrigerated trailers on a global basis. CIMC chose to build the facility in Qingdao, a coastal city with a population estimated at eight million that already was home for several CIMC manufacturing operations.
Construction of the refrigerated trailer plant began in March 2008, and the building was completed in December. Following three months of equipment installation, the facility was ready to begin production.
As of this moment, one production line has been installed and is in operation. The line was designed primarily to build reefer components for the U S market. A parallel line will be set up to build to similar kits with European specifications, along with specialized trailers for Australia and other markets as the global trailer market grows and additional capacity is needed.
At full capacity, the two lines will be able to produce at least 10,000 refrigerated trailers per year from a single shift. Until global trailer demand makes the second line necessary, CIMC will produce refrigerated trailer components for two continents on one assembly line.
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