The signing ceremony for Haier's purchase of an Italian factory was held in the Haier Group on June 19. The purchase marks a historic step taken by Haier in the course of internationalization, making it the first Chinese enterprise purchasing factory in the European household appliances manufacturing center.

Through this purchase, Haier will not only acquire a white home appliances production base in Europe, but also possess the conditions for participating in local manufacturers' organizations and acquiring information, thereby paving the way for achieving the goal of creating world name-brands by making use of local funds, intellectual resources and culture.

This Italian factory is a refrigerator manufacturer. Covering an area of 22,000 square meters, it enjoys a favorable geographic location. There is a concentration of many famous manufacturers here, such as Whirlpool, Candy and Zanussi. It's only 5-km away from the Milan-Venice Expressway, which is one of the important ways leading to north Italy and other European countries, and 40-km and 200-km from Venice and Milan airports respectively. It's very easy for the factory to reach chief Italian ports while highway transportation enjoys more advantages as the continental freeways nearby can cover 80 percent of the major markets of Europe and most of the Balkan region within a radius of 100 km.

The factory will mainly undertake manufacturing, import and export, purchase and sale of household appliances and their parts.

(Beijing News.com.cn 06/20/2001)