Mercedes-Benz marked another important milestone in its ‘built in China, for China’ strategy today by opening its top-notch compact car plant, housed at the company’s local production joint venture Beijing Benz Automotive Corporation (BBAC).

BBAC, a joint venture between Daimler and Chinese partner BAIC Motor, has been producing Mercedes-Benz passenger cars since 2006 and engines since 2013. Official production for the German carmaker’s first locally built compact car, the GLA began today.

“To have the right products and local production footprint is certainly essential for our sustainable growth in China. Today we bring both together, pushing our strategic partnership with BAIC and China to the next level,” said Hubertus Troska, member of the Board of Management of Daimler AG responsible for China. “The investment of 720 million euros (Rs 5,503 crore) demonstrates our confidence into Mercedes-Benz’ prosperous future in China, while boosting our local passenger car production capacities to about 250,000 units by the end 2015 – and we will certainly not stop there.”

Built-up from scratch in a record time of less than 3 years and stretching at present across about 1.5 million square meters, the Beijing-compact car site complements the current Mercedes-Benz’ compact model plants in Rastatt (Germany) and Kecskemet (Hungary) as well as the Valmet Automotive plant in Finland and is the final piece in Mercedes-Benz’s flexible and highly efficient compact car production network. It also strategically complements BBAC, establishing the plant as Mercedes-Benz’s worldwide only production facility that manufactures front- and rear-wheel-drive passenger cars as well as engines under one roof.

Frank Deiss, President and CEO of BBAC, notes: “BBAC is Mercedes-Benz’s worldwide most comprehensive plant, manufacturing sedans, SUVs, engines and from now on also compact cars. Thereby the localization of compact cars marks a key milestone for the company. It will significantly drive BBAC’s local production volume, paving us the way to grow furthermore. In fact BBAC is already today the biggest Mercedes-Benz passenger car plant worldwide.”

The first locally produced GLA models will be launched in China during the Auto Shanghai show this April.