Haixin buys ailing TV plant
Eager to expand abroad because of intense competition at home, Haixin Group, the ninth-largest electronics firm in China, has bought an ailing television plant in South Africa from Daewoo of South Korea.
It paid US$4 million to buy the plant with an annual output of 200,000 televisions, 50,000 VCD and DVD players and 10,000 home audio systems.
Covering an area of 20,000 square metres, it will be China's biggest colour-television plant in South Africa.
Haixin first entered the South African market in 1993, built a plant there in 1996 and by last year had sales of 100,000 televisions, 10 per cent of the market, with sales also to Namibia, Mozambique and other countries in the south of the continent.
Its main competitors are key Japanese makers such as Sony and Matsushita Electric Industrial.
To lower its dependence on television, Haixin is moving into other consumer electronics, telecommunications and information-technology products, including personal computers, and in July will launch a mobile telephone.
It is also active in commerce and property, with 20 subsidiaries in China, net assets of 2.28 billion yuan (about HK$2.13 billion) and sales last year of 13.47 billion yuan.
