Geely's exports surge as it sells over 40,000 units overseas in H1 of 2012

In the first seven months, the proportion of exports in its total sales volume increased from 6% last year to 20%.

"This should be partly attributed to the improvement of our overall product competitiveness," says Zhang Lin, Vice President of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group.

According to him, the Emgrand EC7, which earned four-star rating in an E-NCAP crash test last year, has become the company's number one export model with its June sales in overseas markets hitting 13,946 units, up 69% over year-ago.

Geely is growing by 5 to 8% at home, but the growth in overseas markets has doubled and is expected to reach 10% more than the domestic one in the future.

The acquisition of Volvo in 2010 made the Chinese auto brand better known to overseas markets and Geely transferred from an automaker selling cars to selling brands.

In some emerging markets, Emgrand is even competing with Japanese and Korean brands since local customers have built brand awareness and loyalty to it.

The encouraging performance in overseas markets has fuelled the automaker's internationalisation as it has speeded up expanding foreign factory capacity. To date, it has built a factory in Uruguay and plans to do so in Brazil and Russia.

"This can help us save cost and produce scale effect while letting us learn local customers' tastes better so that we can earn a larger market share," says Zhang.