Text: Crescent Moon
When it comes to companies that have risen and become famous all over the world in Zhejiang, there are countless. Taking the list of China's top 500 manufacturing enterprises in 2021 as an example, there are 77 manufacturing enterprises in Zhejiang Province, and the number of top 500 manufacturing enterprises is second only to Shandong Province, far more than Jiangsu Province (54) and Guangdong Province (40), which is an exceptionally strong manufacturing strength and the foundation for the long-term rapid economic development of Zhejiang Province.
There are many well-known companies on the list, such as Wahaha, one of the giants of the beverage industry, and Youngor Clothing, which has ranked first in the men's wear market share for 21 consecutive years. However, the champion of "Made in Zhejiang" is Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, which has been quietly cultivating, and the company's annual revenue has reached more than 320 billion yuan, second only to Alibaba Group.
At the same time, Geely Holdings ranked 5th in the list of the top 500 private manufacturing industries in 2021. It is worth noting that the top four on the list are Huawei and Lenovo in the communication electronics manufacturing industry, Hengli in the fuel processing industry, and Zhengwei International in the metal processing industry. So what kind of company is Geely Holdings? Can it stand out from a group of private car companies?
As we all know, the founder of Geely Group is Li Shufu, before building a car, he was just a photographer with 100 yuan assets, Li Shufu used his own 100 yuan to open a photo studio. After earning his first pot of gold in the studio, he traveled around in the industry of waste material recycling, decoration building materials, real estate, motorcycles, refrigerators, household appliances and so on.
By 1996, Geely motorcycles had produced and sold 200,000 units, selling well in more than 30 countries and regions. In the same year, Li Shufu also requisitioned 800 acres of swamp land in the east of Linhai City in the name of expanding motorcycle production capacity, and at first people thought that he was "speculating on the land". The next year, the plant was built and boldly announced that it would invest "500 million yuan" to enter the automobile industry.
After the establishment of Geely Group, Geely Group's first car named "Haoqing" was only really mass-produced in 2000. At that time, with the rapid development of the mainland economy, many people began to enter well-off families. As a standard configuration, the sedan also became the choice of many well-off families at that time. "Haoqing" is to quickly seize market share by virtue of its cost-effective advantages.
Later, by chance, Geely Automobile was pushed to a climax, that is, Geely Group acquired the European luxury car Volvo, which was already in a state of loss, but under the leadership of Li Shufu, Volvo achieved profitability in less than two years, which is also one of the most successful cases of overseas mergers and acquisitions of Chinese enterprises.
After the success of this overseas acquisition, Geely was more comfortable and aimed at Mercedes-Benz in Germany. It acquired a 9.6% stake in Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz in Germany, and at one point became its largest single shareholder. At the time, it was worth about $9 billion, and the acquisition process in between was enough to become a legend in China's business history.
However, by December 13, 2021, BAIC Group announced that it would hold a 9.98% stake in Daimler through continued investment. That is to say, at present, BAIC Group has taken over the identity of Daimler's largest shareholder from Geely. Of course, Geely Group is still one of Daimler's major shareholders. BAIC is also one of the top 5 automotive groups in China, which also shows that Chinese companies still dominate Daimler.
Recently, it has been reported that Zhejiang Geely Holding Group and French Renault Group may soon announce an agreement to jointly produce Geely's hybrid vehicles in South Korea and consider exporting these cars to the United States duty-free. For Geely, the agreement could use Renault's auto assembly plant in South Korea, thus gaining a production foothold in South Korea and, more importantly, providing Geely with a more suitable opportunity to go to the United States and even better go global.
In particular, in recent years, the open source and throttling of non-renewable resources in various countries have also promoted the research and development and sales of various new energy vehicles. Although Geely began the research and development of new energy vehicles as early as three years ago, its market share has not been high, and its sales are far less than the sales of other car models under its own, and the sales volume is far behind other new energy vehicle manufacturers.
On January 16, Geely Holding Group released sales data for 2021, with annual car sales reaching 2.2 million units, an increase of 5%, of which new energy vehicle sales exceeded 300,000 units, an increase of 70% year-on-year. The 2022 target is to achieve sales of 2.5 million units. Therefore, this cooperation with Renault Group is also an important breakthrough and transformation of Geely.
Although Geely lost its position as the first shareholder, Geely's goal has actually been achieved. The reason why Geely has painstakingly acquired Volvo and invested in Mercedes-Benz, the ultimate goal is to pursue technology. Finally, Geely has also slowly learned and absorbed advanced technologies through technical cooperation, successfully promoting its own development and becoming the largest private automobile manufacturing group in China.
After all, in the manufacturing industry, only their own technology is excellent, in order to maintain fresh vitality in the market. Geely has always maintained such an attitude in order to successfully achieve revenue of 325.6 billion yuan in 2021. Of course, without Li Shufu's careful layout, Geely could not achieve such development.
It is worth mentioning that among the top 10 proud car companies in 2021, Geely, the "three good students" with stable "quantity and quality price", ranked second, and it is also the only car company in the top three to achieve positive growth. It has sold more than one million vehicles for 5 consecutive years, and has won the annual sales champion of Chinese brand passenger cars for 5 consecutive years.
And in the 2021 Fortune Global 500 list, Geely Holding Group ranked 239th with a revenue of 47.19 billion US dollars, which is the tenth consecutive year that Geely Holding Group has been ranked in the Fortune Global 500, and its brand value is also constantly improving, as the future development of Zhejiang manufacturing "champion" Geely Holding Group is more worthy of attention!