By Chen Jiayi

From 13th to 14th March, good news came from Scania Industrial Operations Asia’s 2nd Supplier Conference held in Rugao: the first trial vehicle of Scania Rugao Industrial Production Base successfully rolled off the assembly line and carried out national road testing. It is expected to be officially put into production in the fourth quarter of the year.

In May 2020, Scania, ‘the King of the Road’ in the truck industry, settled in Rugao Economic and Technological Development Zone as a sole proprietorship. In June 2022, it started to build Scania’s third global production base after Europe and South America. In October 2023, phase 2 powertrain project started construction. The power train production project was added to the existing vehicle project. Up to now, the Rugao base will have a complete production chain.

What is worth mentioning is that Scania’s production base in Rugao is not only the only one in China, but also the largest investment project of the group over the past 60 years.

Up to now, Rugao has formed an automobile industrial chain led by Scania, with high-quality parts projects such as Double Coin Tyre Group Ltd. and Jiangsu Huayong. It covers 3 panels, which are vehicle manufacturing, auto parts and hydrogen energy storage. ‘Rugao industrial production base, as the most advanced and most sustainable industrial production base of Scania in the world, will break Scania's production capacity bottleneck and inject new momentum into the global production system.’ Ruthger de Vries, the President of Scania Industrial Operations Asia, said, ‘the commissioning of the benchmark factory will benefit both China and the global market.’

Fang Tinghai, General Manager of Adler Pelzer Group China, looked forward to the official launch of the Scania Rugao Base project. ‘After Scania invested in Rugao, we followed their pace to carry out the development of automotive interior and exterior products in China simultaneously. At present the group is planning to build a new factory around Rugao.’