Autoliv is Off to China

Autoliv, the worldwide leader in automotive safety systems, today opened its fifth plant globally for safety electronics and its eighth manufacturing facility in China.
The new facility, which is located in Shanghai, will primarily produce airbag control units, both for the growing Chinese market and for other Asian markets such as South Korea and Japan.
The plant could also act as a sub-contractor to other Autoliv plants in high-cost countries.
Autoliv has long pursued a strategy of having manufacturing and engineering resources close to its customers, and to have a substantial portion of its manufacturing base in low labor-cost countries.
Currently, the Company has more than 40% of its employees in these countries. However, so far, Autoliv has only used these nations as a means to reduce costs for its non-electronics products, which typically are more labor intensive to produce than electronics.
The Chinese electronics plant will have 300 employees and the capacity to increase Autoliv’s annual sales of electronic control units for airbag systems by nearly 20%.
The new plant is expected to generate sales of a quarter of a billion dollars annually, once the initial phase is complete.