Geely, which now owns London taxi maker Manganese Bronze Holding, has restarted production at the Manganese Bronze plant in Coventry to help build 500 TX4 black taxis for an order from Nanjing in eastern China.
This is the second order for taxis that Geely has landed in China this year, having already delivered 30 to the Hengdian film studio in east China's Zhejiang Province.
The first batch of 50 for Nanjing were built at Geely's plant in suburban Shanghai and delivered earlier this month, while the Coventry production line began rolling again after seven months on 13 September, with a workforce of 170 producing about 50 TX4's a week.
R171.6 MILLION LIFELINE
Geely, which already owned 20 percent of Manganese Bronze, bought the remaining 80 percent for R171.6 million in February to prevent the maker of London's iconic taxis from closure.
It plans to invest a further R2.4 billion in the company over the next five years to make 'significant improvements’ at the Coventry plant and develop new models to follow the current TX4.
Geely SA has no plans to launch the TX4 in South Africa.