Author: Ling Min

Another piece has been added to the global map of Great Wall Motors.

On August 18th, Great Wall Motors signed an agreement with Daimler Group to acquire the Iracemapolis Plant in Brazil, which is located in the most populous and economically developed state of Sao Paulo in Brazil.

As Mercedes-Benz Brazil factory is officially “under new management,” Great Wall Motors will take Brazil as a “foot in the door” to knock on the door of the South American market and radiate to neighboring countries and regions.

This contrast is very interesting. International auto giants such as Mercedes-Benz and Ford, which were once industry leaders, have sold factories and implemented a “shrinking” plan to streamline their global business, while Chinese auto brands represented by Great Wall Motors have insisted on expanding their overseas business and accelerating globalization into the global market.

This reflects the trend of independent Chinese brands venturing abroad.

Wei Jianjun, Chairman of Great Wall Motors, has publicly stated that Chinese brand globalization is an inevitable trend. From the Tula plant in Russia in 2019, to the India and Thailand plants in 2020, and the Brazil plant in 2021, Great Wall Motors’ globalization can be said to be very steady.

Sales also demonstrate Great Wall Motors’ overseas strength. From January to July this year, Great Wall Motors’ overseas sales reached 74,110 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 176.2%, accounting for 10.4% of the overall sales, and the monthly average sales overseas exceeded 10,000 vehicles.

Now, Great Wall Motors’ Brazil plant will accelerate its development and strategic landing in the South American market, and its transformation into a global technology travel company will go further.

Why Brazil?

Our most intuitive impression of Brazil may be football, but Brazil is also a very broad consumer market. It is the largest country in South America with an area of ​​8.5149 million square kilometers, which is similar to China in size, ranking fifth in the world, and the total population is 210 million.

“Brazil is the largest country in Latin America, with the largest population, the strongest economic strength, the seventh largest auto sales volume in the world, and great potential for the automotive consumption market,” said Liu Xiangshang, Vice President of Great Wall Motors.

The factory acquired by Great Wall Motors this time is huge, covering an area of 1,875 acres, and was previously owned by Mercedes-Benz. It is the only passenger car factory of Mercedes-Benz in Brazil. It started production in 2016 and mainly produces Mercedes-Benz GLA-SUV and C-class sedans.

Neither Mercedes-Benz nor Ford, nor Volkswagen, have launched some high-cost-effective models tailored to the local Brazilian market. In addition, the decline in production volume cannot reduce costs through large-scale production, leading to increasing production costs.

Therefore, Brazil needs automakers like Great Wall Motors that can effectively control costs and provide high-cost-effective car models.Especially in the pure electric market. It is understood that Brazil’s new energy vehicles are different from most countries in the world, as they use ethanol fuel and have a very high market share for this type of new energy vehicle. Great Wall Motors conservatively estimates that they will mainly import complete vehicles first, and then plan to produce pure electric vehicles suitable for the local market based on the development of their business in Brazil.

According to the asset acquisition agreement signed by both parties, the Brazilian Itumbiara Polis factory, including land, plant, machinery and equipment, will be transferred to Great Wall Motors. The annual production capacity after transformation will reach 100,000 vehicles and will create nearly 2,000 job opportunities locally.

In the next five years, Great Wall Motors plans to invest more than 5 billion yuan in the factory. Currently, the first step is to upgrade and improve the intelligence level, not only by upgrading the equipment and processes in the welding, painting, and assembly workshops, but also by expanding the production capacity, carrying out flexible transformation of the existing production lines, and increasing intelligent manufacturing equipment to achieve the production of multiple vehicle models on the same line.

Seizing the opportunity and going all-in on globalization.

The Iracemapolis factory acquired from Daimler in Brazil this time is Great Wall Motors’ fourth full-process vehicle manufacturing factory overseas, fully covering markets such as Eastern Europe, ASEAN, and South America, and building a more comprehensive “global layout”.

It can be said that Great Wall Motors has opened up a new journey of globalizing Chinese automobile brands with its own strength.

At this year’s 2025 strategy conference, Great Wall Motors released a bold declaration of achieving global annual sales of 4 million vehicles by 2025, and this goal cannot be achieved through the Chinese market alone.

Opportunities cannot be missed.

In Wei Jianjun’s view, Chinese automakers indeed have certain advantages in the two major fields of new energy and intelligent vehicles, but the window for expanding these advantages is very short-lived, lasting only three to five years. Great Wall Motors is therefore taking a series of frequent actions to land and flourish globally. Taking the Thai production plant acquired last year as an example, in just one year, it not only completed the transformation and new vehicle production, but it also achieved good results by taking the second place in sales of compact SUVs in the Thai market in the first month of the global launch of the new car, Haval H6 HEV, which took place last July. Haval Chulian, on the other hand, sold 704 units in its first month on the South African market, taking first place in small SUV dealer retail sales.

Long before Longxiang Motors achieved good sales, it had already earned a good reputation. In the first half of this year, in collaboration with Google, “2021BrandZ China’s Top 50 Global Brands” was released, and Longxiang Motors made the list, ranking among the top 20 Chinese emerging market stars in countries like India and Brazil.

This shows that Longxiang’s 2025 strategy is “All-in Globalization”. It not only seeks to establish globalized R&D, production, and sales, but also to continue to pursue brand, technology, and human resources globalization.

Today, Longxiang Motors not only invests in building factories in countries like Russia, Thailand, and Brazil, but it has also established overseas research and development centers in countries such as Japan, the United States, and Germany. In Thailand and other markets, Longxiang Motors also launched a new retail concept and established experience stores, achieving full localization throughout the entire chain from manufacturing, research and development, procurement to sales, and completed the strong output of technology, management systems, and quality standards.

The “Longxiang Gene” is constantly being injected into overseas markets. For the vast universe of Longxiang Motors, this is only a new beginning. Longxiang’s overseas markets will surely usher in an explosive development, and that will be the moment when Chinese automobile brands truly explode.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.