Dongfeng Honda Automobile, an equal stake joint venture between Dongfeng Motor and Honda Motor Company, has unveiled plans to construct a third automobile production plant in China.

The new facility will be built on a 1.2M sq m plot, located at about 8km southeast of the company’s first plant in the Wuhan Economic & Technological Development District.

The RMB3bn ($436M) plant will have an annual production capacity of 120,000 units.

It will increase Dongfeng Honda’s overall annual production capacity to 600,000 units, and Honda’s overall automobile production capacity in China to 1.25M units.

Honda Motor president, CEO and representative director Takahiro Hachigo said: “Honda sales in China is going strong and annual unit sales for 2016 is expected to reach 1.2M units. The Chinese market has potential for further development and growth.

“In order to continue meeting such strong demand, Honda will introduce its highly attractive products equipped with leading-edge technologies to the Chinese market ahead of other markets around the world and deliver joys to our customers here in China.”

The facility is set to become operational in the first half of 2019.

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