European automaker Volkswagen will build its 10th factory in China as part of a long-term strategy in what is now VW's most important market, it said on Wednesday.
Chairman Martin Winterkorn, who signed the contract to build a factory in Foshan, near Guangzhou, said: "We intend to double our capacities in China to three million vehicles per year by 2013/14."
In April, VW announced it would boost its Chinese investment program by 1.6 billion euros (US$1.9 billion) to a total six billion.
VW and its partner FAW-Volkswagen plan to invest about 520 million euros in the Foshan plant, which is designed to produce 300,000 vehicles per year from mid 2013 and employ about 4,000 people.
The biggest European car company, along with FAW-Volkswagen and another partner, Shanghai Volkswagen, currently has nine plants in China and makes around 20 Audi, Skoda and VW models there, a statement said.
Of a total 6.29 million vehicles sold last year, the VW group delivered 1.4 million of them in China.
VW has identified the country as its key market in a drive to overtake Toyota as the world's biggest automaker by 2018.
The group plans to begin making electric cars there in 2013/2014, the statement said.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2010
