HELLA further expands manufacturing capacity in China and opens new lighting plant with joint venture partner BHAP

Lippstadt/Changzhou, 25 July 2022. Beijing Hella BHAP Automotive Lighting, a joint venture between HELLA and BHAP, a subsidiary of the BAIC Group, has opened a new lighting plant in Changzhou in the Chinese province of Jiangsu. The production facility is now the third plant of the joint venture, which was established in 2014. Both partners also maintain another joint venture for electronic products with a manufacturing site in Zhenjiang. The investment volume of the new site in Changzhou is in the low double-digit million euro range.

The focus of the Changhzou plant is primarily on the latest technologies for the vehicle front. For example, a continuous light band more than two meters long which extends across the entire front of the vehicle is manufactured there on a production area of around 12,000 square meters. It consists of a single module; the light band is thus the largest and most complex of its kind in the Chinese automotive market. It is supplied to a Chinese manufacturer of electric vehicles. The annual production volume is initially around 600,000 parts. At present, nearly 150 people are employed at the new lighting plant; in further expansion stages, the number is to be increased to around 300 employees in the medium term.

"Emotional car body lighting has long since become a style-defining element. Since such solutions make a decisive contribution to the unique position and recognition of car manufacturers, the demand for innovative car body lighting is particularly high, not least in the Chinese market," says Didier Keskas, who is responsible for HELLA's lighting business in the Asian region. "To drive this trend, we worked with our partner BHAP to implement a highly complex customer project that meets the highest styling and performance requirements. We are thus setting new standards in the Chinese market in the field of the most sophisticated car body lighting."

"The opening of our new lighting plant in Changzhou with our long-standing joint venture partner HELLA is an important step for us and an essential action to push the advanced development of BHAP and to further strengthen our market position in the field of electromobility. The lighting solutions we produce in the new plant are not only a central trend topic. But we are also strategically located in the middle of a new, important cluster of the Chinese automotive industry," says Chen Geng, Vice President of BHAP. "In this respect, we are pleased to celebrate the commissioning of the new production facility together with HELLA and to further strengthen our position in our home market."