In the cold winter of 2021, another car company failed to survive the winter.
According to the Enterprise Investigation APP, Renault Brilliance Jinbei Automobile Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Renault Brilliance Jinbei Automobile Co., Ltd.) added a new bankruptcy review case on December 30, case number is (2021) Liao01 Breaking Shen No. 24, the applicant is Renault Brilliance Jinbei, and the manager is the Intermediate People's Court of Shenyang City, Liaoning Province.
The folding of the Renault Brilliance Gold Cup has already been revealed before. On December 21, Renault Brilliance Golden Cup was exposed to have suspended the payment of employee wages, and according to the outflow of December 20 meeting minutes, in addition to medical insurance, employee insurance has stopped paying. In addition, an internal employee of Renault Brilliance Said that the factory has entered a shutdown state 3 months ago. French CEO Guillaume Sicard has also left China and plans to work for Renault in the United Kingdom.
The loss of the Renault Brilliance Gold Cup also means that Renault's layout in the Chinese market has taken a step back. In 2021, the transformation of the automotive industry intensifies, and it becomes more difficult for this joint venture brand, which is not suitable for the Chinese market, to catch up with the pace of the market.
A 4-year life-cycle joint venture
From its establishment to bankruptcy, the life course of Renault Brilliance Gold Cup is only 4 years.
According to public information, Renault Brilliance Gold Cup was established in 2017 and is jointly invested by Renault Group and Brilliance China, with a shareholding ratio of 49% and 51% respectively.
As a former commercial vehicle head brand, Jinbei Automobile achieved a bus market ownership of more than 1 million vehicles in 2010, becoming the first light passenger market, with a market share of up to 75% in this segment.
However, the good times did not last long, and Jinbei Automobile declined in the following years, with sales falling all the way to 23,000 units in 2016, and net profit falling from 0.36 billion yuan in 2015 to a loss of 208 million yuan.
The rapidly expanding loss has put a lot of pressure on Jinbei Automobile. To this end, the parent company Brilliance Group transferred 49% of the shares of Brilliance Jinbei Co., Ltd. to Renault Group for 1 yuan in 2017, and then jointly formed a joint venture company, Renault Brilliance Jinbei.
According to the plan at that time, Renault Brilliance planned to produce and sell light commercial vehicles under the three brands of Jinbei, Renault and Huasong, and proposed to launch five core competitive models by 2023 and achieve an annual sales volume of 150,000 vehicles in 2022.
But the joint venture apparently did not follow the planned pace, and did not launch a remodeled model, the Jinbei Hiace King, until November last year, and the first model of the Renault brand was launched in 2022. Since 2018, Renault Brilliance's sales have declined for three consecutive years, with cumulative sales of 23,000 vehicles in 2020, a year-on-year decline of 42.8%.
In this regard, both shareholders have also taken rescue measures. In June 2020, Renault Brilliance announced a series of reform measures such as cost optimization and quality improvement, which did have some results, but in the process of rapid transformation of the commercial vehicle market, these are not enough to reverse the decline.
The pace of industry change is accelerating, and Renault Brilliance is difficult to keep up with the progress
For the end of Renault Brilliance, Brilliance and Renault, as the two major shareholders, are hard to blame.
Industry analysts believe that brilliance group's high debt is one of the reasons for the bankruptcy of Brilliance Renault. According to Brilliance Group's first half report in 2021, brilliance group's accumulated liabilities have reached 61.984 billion yuan. Due to the long-term poor management of the autonomous sector, Brilliance Group's revenue basically depends on the joint venture brand BMW Brilliance.
The situation for The Renault Group is also not optimistic. Due to its poor performance in the Chinese market, in April 2020, Dongfeng Renault officially announced the dissolution, Renault transferred 50% of its equity to Dongfeng Group, and stopped Renault's passenger car business in the Chinese market. Although Renault said that this would not affect the commercial vehicle business, Renault's defeat inevitably damaged its already weak brand power again.
At the moment when the passenger car market ushered in the new four transformations, the changes in the commercial vehicle market are also following suit.
Wan Xinming, general manager of China Automotive Engineering Research Institute Co., Ltd., said that the commercial vehicle industry is experiencing changes that have not been seen in a century, and under the background of intelligent networking and "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality", commercial vehicle companies are paying more and more attention to the improvement of product performance and technical connotation.
For example, SAIC Maxus has previously launched mifa, an exclusive brand for new energy, and announced that more than 10 new energy products will be released in the next 3 years, which will use pure electricity or hydrogen fuel cells. Also launching new energy brands is Foton Motor.
On the other hand, Renault Brilliance previously proposed to launch 5 core competitive models in 2023, which cover electric models, but from the perspective of the actual process, the current joint venture brand only introduced a remodeled model last year, and the progress is obviously lagging behind the industry trend.
Luca de Meo, CEO of Renault Group, has previously said that if an automotive company lacks the Chinese market, it is equivalent to a table without legs. At present, with the bankruptcy of Renault Brilliance, Renault Auto has one less chess piece in China.