TCL Corporation, the Chinese TV maker with the third-largest global sales of LCD TV, announced on Thursday its plan of setting up a joint LCD TV factory in Egypt that is expected to have the largest capacity among the Chinese-invested joint LCD TV manufacturing bases in North Africa.
The joint factory will complete the first phase investment of $2.4 million and go into operation in 2017, and the annual output will amount to 2 million sets over the coming five years, TCL told China Daily.
TCL, the largest Chinese TV exporter to Egypt, and ELARABY, the largest home appliances enterprise in Egypt, signed a memorandum in Shenzhen on Thursday about the "win-win" cooperation.
"The Egypt-based joint LCD TV factory will supply the African and Middle East markets and get stable orders for TCL with the help of ELARABY's well-developed sales network," said Liang Tiemin, general manager of TCL's strategic clients business center.
"We have been cooperating with TCL in television business for a long time and am happy to take it further with the joint factory. We believe that the new project will help expand our sales network and consolidate our market share," said Mohyielden Elaraby, chief sales officer of ELARABY.
TCL will contribute 30 percent of the first phase investment on the joint factory, and ELARABY will contribute 70 percent.
While the markets for LCD TV in China, the United States and Europe have become saturated, TCL is optimistic about the prospect of the markets in Arab states, Africa and the Mediterranean countries, estimating the size to exceed 20 million sets per year in total.
Also, the Egyptian government gives tax rebates to those imports that have more than 40 percent of the production done in Egypt.
As one of the first Chinese companies going global, TCL established its first overseas TV manufacturing base in Vietnam in 1999 and has raised the proportion of its overseas revenue to nearly half of the total annual revenue.
TCL Multimedia Technology Holdings Ltd has established a factory in Poland to serve the European market and a factory in Mexico to serve the North American and Central American markets.
The joint venture in Egypt marks the start of TCL's new round of overseas expansion, which will step up efforts to develop businesses in emerging markets, given the opportunities brought by China's Belt and Road Initiative, TCL said in a press release.
