During Chinese New Year when the vast majority of Chinese families are busy gathering to celebrate the new year, Geely’s global family came together for one of its most ambitious projects to date – a global procurement program to source medical materials to fight the Coronavirus that is sweeping China.
In late January, Geely Group leadership was made aware of a new strain of illness that was emerging from the Wuhan region, China’s industrial heartland. The Group acted immediately; working in hand with the Li Shufu Public Welfare Fund, Geely Group established a 200 million RMB fund (28 million USD) to be used to purchase much needed medical supplies from across the world.
The entire family of Geely’s brands heard the call with each brand moving to play its part in the fight against Coronavirus.
Geely’s global footprint came into play almost instantly – The Group’s Swedish branch Geely Sweden and also Geely Auto’s subsidiary R&D China Euro Vehicle Technology (CEVT) committed over 30 people to support with sourcing and purchasing of some 250,000 medical masks of different classes, and tens of thousands of other pieces of medical garments from across Europe.
Gang Wei, who normally manages the construction and establishment of the Geely Innovation Center in Gothenburg, Sweden, got the task to oversee the group’s contribution in Sweden. “We shifted focus from the daily work and our project team was immediately working day and night to source supplies for the relief effort. The Gothenburgers in the team says it’s our turn to help Geely and China out, just as Geely’s investments in Sweden ten years ago really helped Sweden in a bad situation. We have also showed the public here that Geely is a company with a heart, and I can feel the employees are proud to participate in this project.” Says Gang Wei.
Medical resources were immediately sourced by the teams in Sweden and the first batch left Sweden on a plane to China only days later. In China they are distributed by Geely to the authorities to coordinate the supplies to who need them the most.
Geely’s ride hailing CaoCao was ordered by the government to suspend its operations in the region but immediately came back to offer its services for free within affected areas with drivers volunteering to support sick people and medical staff on the front lines with travel support, especially as all private cars were on lock down to prevent the spread of the virus.
Many driver who volunteer have said “My hometown is sick, I just want to do my part to help it get better. This fight isn’t something we can just give up and accept, each one of us must do everything in our power to help.”
Volvo Cars China also moved to establish a 10 million RMB fund to support Coronavirus efforts in the Shanghai region where Volvo Cars is based. The funds will be used to buy medical equipment and medical masks.
Geely’s Commercial Vehicle brand – Farizon Auto established a program with a logistics partner to use the Yuan Cheng EV200 Range Extended trucks to take much needed supplies from Yi Wu City in Zhejiang Province to Wuhan City, a journey of over 700km. With Wuhan closed to the outside world for nearly a week, Yuan Cheng was able to bring food and bottled water into hospitals on the front line
Geely Auto donated 50 of its latest MPV models to be used by frontline medical workers in the Wuhan region, allowing them to travel between hospitals and also to carry out home welfare checks within the Wuhan region.
The Li Shufu Welfare Fund is working non-stop to source materials from across the USA, Europe and ASEAN region to support the fight against the Coronavirus in China. With over 17,000 confirmed victims to date it is paramount that Geely plays its part as a responsible member of society to wider society and helps those that need it most.