Hefei records launch of 19 projects worth $4b

A total of 19 projects, with investment reaching 25.97 billion yuan ($3.84 billion), broke ground in Hefei Economic & Technological Development Area of Hefei, capital city of East China's Anhui province, on Sunday.

Among the plans is a 3.5 billion yuan new energy vehicle plant of the Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Co, or JAC. Upon completion, the factory will produce 100,000 new energy vehicles annually, with expected annual output value hitting 30 billion yuan, according to local authorities.

German carmaker Volkswagen AG and JAC reached a memorandum of understanding in Germany earlier to set up a 50:50 joint venture on new energy vehicles, although it's not clear whether the to-be-built new plant is related to that deal.

Other projects include a two billion yuan robotics hub of the Harbin Institute of Technology Robots Group (HRG), a leading robot developer in China.

It will be HRG's biggest robotics hub in eastern China and will include HRG's eastern China headquarters, a robot manufacturing plant and a R&D center for robotics technologies, said Han Jiecai, vice-president of HRG, at the contract-signing ceremony for the project in July.

Another project is a 1 billion yuan new plant for Lenovo's tablet personal computers.