Fuyao Glass, the world's second-largest auto glass maker by sales, said it expects to see strong overseas sales growth in the years ahead with Europe and South America leading the way, according to its corporate chairman. "The EU debt crisis has created new opportunities for Fuyao to expand the business overseas in specific regions." said Cao Dewant, Chairman of Fuyao Glass Industry Group Co Ltd to China Daily on the sidelines of the annual session of the 12th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, which opened on Sunday. "EU countries, such as Germany, Italy and the UK - and South America, led by Brazil, are the places Fuyao is targeting," said Cao. Since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, Chinese overseas direct investment has been on the rise amid the drop in the global foreign direct investment, and increasing numbers of Chinese companies have been seeking opportunities to acquire their global counterparts. But the Chairman, who is also a philanthropist, said Fuyao is not trying to buy their competitors and will not consider mergers and acquisitions in the target markets in the short term. In 2011, the company announced it would spend US$ 200M to build a factory in Russia that will begin operations this year. The factory, which is expected to produce 1M units of auto glass annually, will supply the Russian market and Eastern Europe, a region that is increasingly expanding amid the EU debt crisis. Fuyao's sales revenue during the first 3Q of 2012 increased by 6.3% over the previous year to US7.55BN, according to a corporate statement published at the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
