Great Wall powers through market slump and focuses on empire building

Chinese carmaker Great Wall Motors has bucked the downward market trend with its products and global strategy and achieved enviable results in China and overseas.

As the country's largest SUV and pickup truck producer, it delivered 63,299 vehicles in June. This brought its total sales in the first half of 2019 to 493,538, up 4.7 percent year-on-year.

The sales ranked Great Wall Motors sixth among Chinese carmakers. It was the only one of the top six carmakers whose sales grew in the first half of the year.

This comes as a downward trend sweeps across China's automotive market.

Total vehicle sales in China last month stood at 2.06 million, down 9.6 percent year-on-year. It marked the 12th straight monthly fall, said the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers on Wednesday.

Sales from January to June 2019 totaled 12.32 million, falling 12.4 percent year-on-year.

Passenger vehicles, which accounted for the majority of the auto market, stood at 10.12 million in the same period. This marks a steeper fall of 14 percent.

Great Wall Motors' performance was due primarily to its SUVs. Sales of its Haval H6 reached 27,052. It has ranked as the most popular SUV in China for 73 months so far.

Haval H-series models' deliveries totaled more than 350,000 from January to June, up 8.5 percent year-on-year.

The brand's F-series has become another driving force of Great Wall Motors' performance since their debut in 2018.

The flagship F7 saw its sales reach 10,128 in June. It marked the seventh consecutive month in which more than 10,000 such vehicles were sold.

Great Wall Motors' overseas sales grew even faster. Last month, it exported 6,711 vehicles, up 83.3 percent year-on-year. Total exports from January to June totaled 30,305, up 29.4 percent from the same period last year.

The company is selling its SUVs and pickup trucks in more than 50 countries and regions worldwide.

Its overseas achievements are not limited to sales. On June 5, its plant in Tula, a city 193 kilometers south of Moscow, started production.

The $500 million plant is the company's largest ever investment overseas. It is also the first overseas wholly-owned full-process manufacturing plant by any Chinese carmaker.

"Going global is an inevitable trend for Chinese brands," said Wei Jianjun, founder and chairman of the company.

"The Haval plant in Russia is one of the most important parts of Great Wall Motors' overseas strategy, and it starts a new era for Chinese carmakers to sell their technology and standards to foreign markets," he said.

The plant has a designed annual capacity of 150,000 vehicles. In accordance with the carmaker's vision, around 65 percent of components will be purchased in Russia.

It is producing the Haval F7 SUV and is to introduce more SUVs including the compact F7X and the full-size H9 in the future.

Great Wall Motors said it would like to make the most of the plant by producing models of other Chinese brands.

The carmaker hopes the plant will better serve local demands but also work as a base for its foray into eastern European markets. This includes the adjacent countries of Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova.

It expects the global market to become its main battlefield.

Earlier this year, the carmaker released an ambitious plan. It aims to sell more than 2 million Haval-branded vehicles a year within five years and thus become the largest SUV producer globally.

"We cannot make do with becoming the top player in China. We must go to explore the global market and compete with international brands at their doorsteps," said Wei.