Hyundai Heavy Industries, the world’s biggest shipbuilder and a leading construction equipment manufacturer, completed a wheel loader factory in Taian, China on November 8.

With an investment of USD 49 million, the factory specializing in 3-ton and 5-ton wheel loaders will help the Company achieve annual sales of 10,000 wheel loaders in China by 2015. The new factory has an annual production capacity of 8,000 wheel loaders.

The Taian factory will solidify Hyundai Heavy’s position as a total construction equipment maker in China along with the Company’s other construction equipment and parts plants in Jiangsu, Beijing, and Shandong province. The new plant is also expected to improve parts supply, logistics, and sales between the local plants.

At the completion ceremony, Mr. Choe Byeong-ku, a senior executive vice president and COO of Hyundai Heavy’s Construction Equipment Division said, “The Taian wheel loader factory will serve as another stepping stone for Hyundai Heavy Industries in the global construction equipment market. This will be another success story in China, land of unlimited possibilities”

Last September, Hyundai Heavy achieved accumulated global sales of 350,000 units of construction equipment 26 years after it started the business. Moreover, for the 9 months ended at September 30 this year, Hyundai Heavy recorded total USD 3 billion sales, which is 37% up against the same period last year.