Lifan Cars in Ethiopia-Lifan Motors chooses to establish KD factory in the territory by cooperating with Holland Car Company, export KD parts to Ethiopia and assembled locally.

 

The First Batch Lifan Cars in Ethiopia

From a Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Lifan Motors Offlined

With the last step of the assembly done by Lifan engineers, on February 24^th, 2010, LIFAN520 announced its official off-line. The promise of three-months to deliver cars stirs unlimited expectations and attention on the model from the local consumers. The ahead-of-schedule off-line of LIFAN520 not only blows a spring wind to Ethiopian auto industry, but ushers in an era of 3-months short delivery that Lifan has promised.

It is known that Lifan Motors started selling from last Dec.15, and now it has gained high popularity at the local. ‘Yangfan is a manufacturer and a seller, which saves the middle cost. Besides 3-months delivery, we are assured with better after-sales service.’ Consumers expressed. Yangfan Motors, as the only supplier of Lifan Motors in Ethiopia, integrates manufacturing and selling, guarantees more stable assembly quality, more sufficient spare parts supply, more professional after-sales service and shorter delivery time, which will brings more surprises to the local consumers.

LIFAN520, the first family sedan from Lifan Motors, is well acknowledged in the world. It successfully passed E-NCAP crash test in Russia with 21.5 (3-stars) which breaks a new record of the test among Chinese brands. This model backing with mature technology support and super quality is showing the reliability and capability of Chinese cars to the world.

‘This is only a beginning’, Lifan engineers said. ‘ We will strictly control the quality, turn out comfortable, safe and energy-efficient cars and guarantee 3-month delivery! We will continuously practice the principle of faith first and consumers first which Lifan Motors always advocates. We will repay consumers with our actions.’

The ahead-of-schedule off-line of the first car is a milestone in Lifan Motors’ history. This will undoubtedly push forward the booming development in Ethiopia. By 2012, Lifan Group will invest 30 million dollars to its Ethiopian auto project to upgrade 4S stores, factory and service stations, and realize the aim of 2000upa.

 

 

 

Blue Nile flows in Ethiopia ---- Lifan Motors in Ethiopia

After more than thirty years of Reform and Opening-up, Chinese national vehicle industry has gradually walked out to the whole international market. In this, Chongqing Lifan Group, which started its business by motorcycle manufacture, is one of the later comers. In 2006, Lifan Motors just entered international market, and during its process, Lifan suffered difficulty, besides enjoying the happiness of success.

Symiry is the Vice Factory Director of Lifan’s KD factory in Ethiopia, after each completion of every car, he likes to blow the horn to delivery his joy, because it’s a car made by him in his own country.

Ethiopia hasn’t established its own vehicle industry, second hand imported cars are every where in the street. See the potential in Ethiopia market, in 2007, Lifan Motors chooses to establish KD factory in the territory by cooperating with Holland Car Company, export KD parts to Ethiopia and assembled locally. Lifan 520 has a very famous name in Ethiopia, Abay. Symiry said, Abay means blue Nile; Named Lifan 520 Abay due to that blue Nile river originated from Ethiopia.

Lifan used to be not accustomed to the foreign environment once when it was just established in Ethiopia. The general manager of Lifan Motors Assembly Plant, Mr. Liu Yongbing told a story about the early Abay: ‘In the beginning, we hung out an advertising board in the front door of the plant, in local official language, but the town government felt offended because they thought we should use the language of their town. So we torn down the advertising board and hung a new one in the language of the town, and added Aromonia on it.’

This penny thing attracted awareness of Lifan that in order to stably stand in Ethiopia, to be localized is the key strategy, furthermore, the most important aspect of this key strategy is to localize employees. Mr. Liu said, ‘Including me, there are only four Chinese workers, and we did not participate in the essential production, but afforded technology support and work correspondences. Therefore, basically 90% of work was finished by the localized employees, the middle-level and grass-roots leadership are all from the town.

Soon, Lifan knocked Ethiopia market open, and became more and more well-known, some technology schools thronged to send their students to Lifan for exercitation opportunities, many experienced technicians hopped their job to Lifan. When reporter asked one of the workers why he came to work for Lifan, his answer was: ‘Lifan is a famous company, I came for its name.’

From the early disaccustomed to the later localize strategy, Lifan achieved its first success in Ethiopia market, the supply is inadequate to meet customers’ demands, the sales is far beyond other Chinese brand in Ethiopia. The national government has named Lifan in its purchase list, some senior governors are inclined to buy Lifan car as their private car. The minister of Ethiopia Trade and Industry Ministry, Mr. Tadesee is one of these governors. He said: ‘I want to buy a Lifan for my family; There are many reasons, one of them is that Lifan is the first car assembled in our country; besides me, there are lots of people in Addis Ababa who want to buy Lifan, and if they can buy it. As I know, people in this country have to queue to buy Lifan.’

At present, the assembly plant is a small one in Ethiopia, but another bigger one as an assembly base facing to eastern Africa is in the work. Lifan’s chief representative in Ethiopia, Mr. Pan Juequan said that Lifan has a five years plan, which is aimed at exporting cars to countries which have reciprocal tariff with Ethiopia. During the process, there is a question, which is the localization purchase rate. Because of this, in the coming five years, Lifan will increase the localization of producing spare parts, and strive for reaching 50%--60% localization rate.

In Mr. Qian Zhaogang’s eye, who is the commercial counselor of Chinese embassy in Ethiopia, Lifan developed Ethiopia national industries while it developing itself. He said, ‘Lifan is good at sharing the experience of development of Chinese national industry with Africa countries. After Lifan arrived in Africa, it did serious analysis on Ethiopia market before it decided to build its manufacture base in this country, Not only Lifan Motors, but also Lifan Motorcycle and General Engines, all of the produce along Nile will move to Ethiopia. At the same time, in a certain period, Lifan will help to establish the local industry system.’