Ferretti Sails into the China Market with the Whole World in View

Informations

• Publié par: hill-and-knowlton-asia-limited-prn-asia
• Nombre de lectures: 24
• Langue: English

Extrait

Ferretti Sails into the China Market with the Whole World in View

PR Newswire BEIJING, Aug. 28, 2012

BEIJING,Aug. 28, 2012/PRNewswire/ -- Subsequent to Weichai Group's acquisition of a 75% interest in Italian-based Ferretti Group ("Ferretti"), the world's largest luxury yacht manufacturer inJanuary 2012, Weichai Group and Ferretti jointly held a press conference today at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse inBeijingto announce Ferretti's outlook and strategies in tapping into theChina market. In his speech at the press conference, Mr. Tan Xuguang, Chairman of Shandong Heavy Industry Group Co., ("SHIG") and Chairman of the Board of Ferretti, said that Weichai Group's strategic restructuring of Ferretti group would realize three key goals: Firstly, from being a local Chinese brand Weichai Group would leap forward to become international; Secondly, the Group has extended its ground engine manufacturing to encompass maritime engine manufacturing; Thirdly, Weichai Group would go beyond managing a local team to being involved in global operations. Mr. Tan Xuguang said the new Ferretti Group would take advantage ofChina's market needs and its maritime travel resources to spearhead its business development inChina. Mr. Tan Xuguang emphasized that leveraging its advantages in technologies, resources and capital, and learning from global leading yacht manufacturing technologies, the Company would develop yacht engine system, and further integrate yacht industrial chain covering upper stream, middle stream and downstream. The Company strives to develop into a large-sized comprehensive yacht industry group, which covers luxury yacht design, yacht engine system solutions, luxury yacht manufacturing, popularizing aquatic leisure lifestyle, as well as planning and organizing aquatic sports races. Ferruccio Rossi, the newly-appointed CEO of Ferretti, said that Ferretti'sChina strategy had brought new opportunities to the Company. Weichai Group's influence in the industry and its financial strengths will spur Ferretti's strategy. What's more, he and his team were deeply impressed that the Weichai Group acquisition project team, with the Chairman Mr. Tan Xuguang as its representative, injected the full capital as scheduled and completed the handover of the project in July despite the worsening European debt crisis. This was also despite the unfavorable external factors such as the global financial crisis and European debt crisis, as well as the enormous challenges arising from the acquisition itself in the past eight months. It was a significant breakthrough for Ferretti to merge with an industrial group in its history of development. When interviewed by reporters, Mr. Tan Xuguang, Chairman of the Board of Ferretti said that the strategic partnership between Weichai Group and Ferretti was in line with Weichai Group's mid-to-long-term strategic plan. The Group included the yacht industry under its five major business segments after in- depth research by the professional decision-making team, a decision which has been proven to be a successful one. The move also makes sense given the Chinese economy restructuring and the transformation of the Group's business structure.

Weichai Group is a wholly-owned subsidiary of SHIG, one of the most competitive equipment manufacturing groups inChina. It operates three main divisions, namely entire vehicles, powertrain systems and marine power systems, which run branches and subsidiaries all overEurope,North America andSoutheast Asia. The restructured Italian company Ferretti, 75% of whose interest is held by Weichai Group, is the largest luxury yacht manufacturer in the world with nearly 50 years of history in sailing and international luxury yacht design and manufacturing. The strategic restructuring of Ferretti by Weichai Group was an important step for the latter to implement its business restructuring, and to achieve significant synergies in the allocation of resources which will help achieve a win-win outcome. Ferretti Group will run its operation legally according to the demand of scientific and regulated corporate management process. The mutual benefits of Ferretti'sChinastrategy are: With regard to the market,Chinahas evolved from being a "country of production" to becoming a "country of consumption". In the industrial development cycle, a GDP model driven solely by investment will be replaced by one driven by both investment and consumption. With an ever-expanding Chinese middle and upper class, there will be more consumers and higher consumption, which is certain to boost the development of yacht market in China. The CANSI estimates that by 2020,China's yacht market will be worth RMB 50 billion. Leveraging its industrial position and business practice, Weichai Group leads the transformation in the pattern of "made-in-China" to "consumed-in-China" in an innovative manner. Its strategic partnership with Ferretti is consistent with this goal. The kick-off of Ferretti'sChinastrategy represents the re-integration of Ferretti'sChinaand global strategies. Weichai Group will deploy its superior resources in the automobile industry over the past decade and further enhance its shipping business chain, in order to forge its third golden industrial chain after business automobile and engineering machinery. The successful restructuring of the Ferretti yacht business and Weichai Group was an innovative move by the latter on assimilating and rebuilding high-end and world-class brands, to enhance the value-add of the products and draw more attention from the U.S. and European markets to the "Made-in-China" proposition. Weichai Group has successfully elevated a product brand into a brand which is synonymous with the company, tappingChina's wealth of domestic and overseas resources to create a brand recognized the world over.