Fuyao production ramps up as customer orders grow

Cho Tak Wong, chairman of Fuyao Global — seen here to the right of a Chinese gift at the company’s October grand opening — estimated in 2016 that the Fuyao Glass America plant in Moraine could have 3,000 employees at some point, but he attached no timeline to that prediction. THOMAS GNAU/STAFF

Cho Tak Wong, chairman of Fuyao Global — seen here to the right of a Chinese gift at the company’s October grand opening — estimated in 2016 that the Fuyao Glass America plant in Moraine could have 3,000 employees at some point, but he attached no timeline to that prediction. THOMAS GNAU/STAFF

Fuyao Glass America, the world’s largest auto glass plant, is poised to break even this year, ending two years of financial losses, while addressing employee communication and safety concerns, company leaders said Wednesday.

Launching a sprawling auto safety glass manufacturing complex from scratch has been challenging, leaders acknowledged. But the barely three-year-old Moraine company is meeting customers’ standards and seeing growing customer orders, Jeff Daochuan Liu, president of Fuyao Glass America, told Dayton Daily News editors in a meeting at the plant.

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“I don’t think any other company can do the same things that we’re doing,” Liu said.

Fuyao Global Chairman Cho Tak Wong, a Chinese billionaire industrialist, bought the former General Motors assembly plant in the spring of 2014 in an investment observers hailed as historic. The company has said it has invested more than $600 million in the plant and a raw glass supply operation in Mount Zion, Ill.

But there have been growing pains. A pair of top American Moraine managers were let go last November, and Liu said shortly after his appointment that the company had lost about $90 million in two years.

Earlier this year, in its annual report, Fuyao Global said the parent company was profitable even as Fuyao’s Moraine operation lost $41 million in 2016.

That is being turned around, leaders said.

“I have a great chance to break even this year,” Liu said, before adding minutes later: “I have no choice. I have to do it.”

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