The scandal-stricken Kelon Electrical Holdings Co. made an official announcement Tuesday, saying that this Guangdong-based fridge maker will resume production in mid August.

The public security bureau of Foshan detained five top leaders of Kelon including its board chairman Gu Chujun on Monday, accusing them of "economic crimes."

The company news spokesman Liu Weixiang said Tuesday that the staff members of Kelon are basically working in stable condition and the company are communicating with some financial institutions and material suppliers so that it can quickly resume production.

As a matter of fact, Kelon has never completely halted its production, said the spokesman.

The company keeps receiving international order forms from General Electrics and Whirlpool and has already finished the 300-million-US-dollar processing task in the first half of this year.

Liu said Kelon boasts China's largest fridge production capacity and it also has excellent managing and technological teams.

"We will restore our sales to the level of this May within three months and entirely resume the original production scale by the end of this year if we have 700 to 800 million yuan starting funds (about US$84.6 to 96.7 million)."

Liu said Kelon is a large-scale company with about 30,000 staff members and the government will not let it collapse.

Yet the local government of Shunde, where the company's headquarters is located, holds no shares of Kelon, so it will not take over the company, said the spokesman, adding that the government is currently doing some coordinating work and trying to give some supports to help it resume operation soon.

Liu said he hope that the problem of the major shareholders will not affect the entire company. "The interests of shareholders and the staff will never be really maintained unless Kelon resumes production as quickly as possible."

(Xinhua News Agency August 3, 2005)