In 2007, Geely Automobile, one of China's fastest-growing indigenous car makers, embarked on a journey of strategic transformation, with its focus shifting from "producing affordable quality cars "to "producing the safest, most environment-friendly and most energy-saving cars.

With a fast growing domestic demand several years ago, most homegrown car manufacturers were intent on churning out more cars to gain a firm footing. Against this backdrop, the cool-headed Geely, with a clear idea of its intrinsic constraints, decided to make a strategic transition based a visionary judgment that the government might strengthen its macroeconomic regulation and an extensive study of the development of domestic and international auto industry.

Several years of hard work in restructuring finally paid off. Geely has made a substantial progress on brand building, advanced technology development, new cars design and car exportation.

The year 2012 saw tangible benefits delivered by the restructuring efforts. With a domestic demand for passenger cars growing by 7 percent last year, Geely secured a total shipment of 491,000 unit cars, a year-on-year increase of 13.6 percent, the third fastest growth among the top 15 car makers in China, earning itself a spot for the first time in the top 10 list in terms of sales volume. The year 2012 also witnessed a sharp export growth of Geely of over 100,000 units, 165 percent increase up from 2011.

As regards the international operations, Geely has successfully transformed from its original export-oriented business mode into the more flexible and diverse form of integrated marketing. The company also establishes joint-venture factories overseas and fuels exports by producing locally, which has rapidly promoted its overseas business.

In July, 2012, the Fortune Global 500 of 2012 was released. Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, with a revenue of $23.36 billion in 2011, was ranked the 475th place. Within automobile circle, it was ranked 31st among its counterparts, wedged between Mazda Motor Corporation and Mitsubishi Motors. Volvo Group was placed at 208th on the list. Along with Geely, only 2 other Chinese automobile manufacturers were included on the list.

December, 2012, Geely's "Automobile Safety Technology Research and Industrialization" program was awarded the first prize of 2012 China Automobile Industry Scientific and Technical Award, which is the top award in China's automobile industry. In 2012, Geely's first SUV, the Gleagle GX7, came out the only homemade car rated super-five-star in a crash test of China-New Car Assessment Program (C-NCAP).

Last year, Geely overhauled its marketing system, reshaping the original three business divisions of the Gleagle, the Englon and the Emgrand into the North, Central and South divisions. The respective market of three brands were concentrated and run in the company's sales headquarters. The original brand division leaders were given new jobs as bosses of three regions, each in charge of their daily operations of all the three brands.

The outside considered the reform as changing from being vertical to being horizontal, a move highly hailed by Geely as an effective way to enhance the brand management by expanding sales network into rural areas and integrating resources. By doing so, the newly established divisions are allowed to push forward market segmentation targeting different consumer groups, and meanwhile pool their resource to achieve breakthroughs in certain areas.

"2013 will be a bonanza year for Geely. We are talking about a record sales volume of 560,000 unit cars, an annual growth of 16 percent." said Li Shufu, the Chairman of Geely. In his new year's speech to his employees, he remarked, "This year we will create an effective and environment-friendly powertrain, so we should make more efforts to promote our automatic transmission technology and launch our turbo engines. During 2013, we will release more MPV and SUV products, further expanding our product lineup. Product quality and after-sale service will always be our priority, we will be more determined to improve them to give our consumers more added-value. As always, we will continue to push forward our powertrain project, train first-class crews and dedicate ourselves to building a globe-oriented corporate culture. "

The New Year speech delivered by Li highlighted the importance of Geely's powertrain project when the turbo engines and automatic transmissions, which Geely has been working on for years, are expected to equip its cars. It goes without saying that a strong powertrain is a plus for Geely. Although its market schedule is delayed, the GX7 is blessed with a rosy prospect thanks to a booming market and its high level power system, satisfactory safety performance and state-of-art configuration.

This year Geely is expected to reap the first harvest ever since the acquisition of Volvo. At the end of last year, Volvo entered into three technical agreements with Geely, covering main issues like setting up a medium-sized platform, sharing climate control system and improving safety performance of the GX7. Under the agreements, the two parties should, in a joint effort, work on small, high-performance and environment-friendly engines, a small environment-friendly platform and powertrain technology of green cars such as pure electric, hybrid and plug-in.

This is the starting point of substantial cooperation between the two parts, according to Geely. The new medium-sized platform will be shared with Volvo, pushing the percentage of shared auto parts from 25-30 to 60-70 and increasing compatibility among many models. The move will greatly boost the production efficiency and lower the research cost, which is also conducive to the localization of Volvo cars. In an effort to jointly develop module structure and components of large and mid-sized cars, Volvo and Geely has set up a R&D center in Gothenburg for which both parties have right to use.

The year 2013 will also be a milestone year for Volvo whose newly put-up factory in Chengdu (a southwest city in China) is scheduled to operate in June with S60L chosen as its first localized car in China.