Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp signed a letter of intent with Shell Wednesday in Shanghai to jointly invest US$30 million in a 50-50 maintenance business venture.

The investment will be injected into the new company over three years by SAIC's Shanghai Automotive Industry Sales Corp and Shell's Jiffy Lube International. SAIC and Shell will launch the quick-lube service chain stores in Shanghai first and then expand it nationwide.

"The common understanding on the after-sales business in China's auto industry brought Shell and SAIC together," said Hu Maoyuan, president of SAIC, China's largest automaker in term of sales.

"Our company also plans to be the country's biggest service provider in the auto quick-maintenance business, and the partnership with Shell is just a start," he said.

SAIC, which has joint ventures with Volkswagen and General Motors, sold 610,000 autos and earned sales revenue of 120 billion yuan (US$14.46 billion) last year.

Its Volkswagen joint venture makes the Santana models while it produces Buick autos in cooperation with GM.

The quick-lube service refers to a 15-minute oil change and other services like technical checks and interior cleaning.

Besides its venture with Shell on the lube service, SAIC also established in July a strategic partnership with Shanghai Baosteel Group Corp.

Baosteel, China's largest steel-product maker, and Nippon Steel are involved in a 6.5 billion yuan auto steel sheet project.

At present, China's auto market is the world's fastest growing.

In the first nine months of this year, auto output surged 87.2 percent year-on-year to reach 1.43 million units.

Shanghai Automotive Co Ltd, the listed arm of SAIC, said yesterday that its third-quarter net income more than doubled to 484.56 million yuan from 202 million yuan a year earlier.

Shares of Shanghai Automotive added 0.78 percent to close at 13 yuan in Shanghai yesterday.

(Shanghai Daily October 30, 2003)