Press Releases

“There are several reasons why China has an important role to play in the global automotive industry: not only it is a fast growing market, but also a large-scale one, where growth rate means huge volume increase. Also, China can become a platform for global industrial and commercial operations. Finally, China has the potential to offer manufacturers a good quality suppliers’ base, at competitive costs”.
Iveco CEO, Paolo Monferino, made this statement to stress the central role of China in the Iveco global strategy on October 27th at the Naveco premises in Nanjing in the occasion of the take-over of the new company’s General Manager, Mr Zhou Liang. The event celebrated the merger of Naveco and Yuejin into the New Naveco and involved about 2,000 employees.
Naveco is the name of the joint venture between Iveco and Nanjing Automotive Corporation (NAC), established in 1996 to produce the Chinese version of the Daily, a premium product in the top segment of light commercial vehicles and minibuses. New Naveco has integrated Yuejin into Naveco operations.
The Chairman of NAC, Mr Wang Haoliang, stressed that “We are happy to see the great support of both Iveco and NAC with the common effort of all our employees on the New Naveco. We are very proud that sales volumes of Iveco branded light commercial vehicles have dramatically increased in China and that Yuejin improved light truck is widely accepted by the main light truck customers. We see an open and constructive new Naveco full of energy and innovation. In this event we jointly celebrate the cooperation between Iveco and NAC as well as Naveco continuous improvement and development”.
The event in Nanjing also provided the opportunity to recall a glorious page in the Italian automotive history: an expedition carried out by Itala, that, one-hundred years ago, built a symbolic bridge between China and Europe. The Italian car won a two-month race from Beijing to Paris in which five European cars participated. One hundred years later the very same car and a convoy of Iveco vehicles celebrated this unprecedented challenge.
The vehicles, upon leaving Italy, headed to Paris, went to the principal European capital cities before taking the final direction through Eastern Europe, Russia and Mongolia until arriving in Beijing on 20th September.


Iveco
Iveco designs, manufactures, and markets a broad range of light, medium and heavy commercial vehicles, off-road trucks, city and intercity buses and coaches as well as special vehicles for applications such as fire fighting, off-road missions, defence and civil protection.
Iveco employs over 24,500 people and runs 28 production units in 16 Countries in the world using excellent technologies developed in 5 research centres. Besides Europe, the company operates in China, Russia, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, and South Africa. More than 4,600 service outlets in over 100 Countries guarantee technical support wherever in the world an Iveco vehicle is at work.
Turin, 29 October 2007