South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group Vice Chairman Chung Eui-sun flew to China this week in hopes to find ways to revive the sagging sales in the world’s largest automobile market.

Formally, he attended a ceremony marking the completion of Chongqing plant in southwest China on Wednesday.

Chongqing plant furbished with cutting-edge equipments is located in one of the strategic cities of China under the banner of Beijing’s One Belt, One Road infrastructure drive, said Chung at the ceremony as he vowed to deliver new and high-quality cars for Chinese consumers from the new plant.

Hyundai Motor Group together with Beijing Automotive Group Co. invested a combined $1 billion to build the Chongqing plant that is capable of producing parts as well as assembling to finish vehicles.

While in China, the heir to Korea’s biggest automaker would be meeting with Chinese officials in efforts to save the fast deteriorating Chinese operation due to consumer shunning of Korean brands amid diplomatic spat over the deployment of a U.S. missile shield in Korea and proliferation of Chinese car brands, said a company official.

The cumulative sales Hyundai and its sister Kia Motors’ in China nearly halved to 429,000 units in the first six months this year from 808,000 units in the same period last year.

The sharp fall in the Chinese market took toll on the group’s overall global sales. Hyundai Motor Group’s global sales in the January-June period slipped 8.7 percent on year.

Chung chaired emergency meetings with overseas operation chiefs last week. The management is hoping the beefed-up lineup of new models in the second half and acceleration towards new-generation vehicles will help to refuel its growth.

The Chongqing plant is the automaker’s fifth manufacturing base in China with an annual production capacity of 300,000 units. The new assembly lines will start full-fledged operation soon and deliver 30,000 compact cars by the end of this year. The company plans to manufacture four different models exclusively at its Chongqing plant by 2019 that will be sold throughout China.

By Lee Seung-hoon and Park Chang-young

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