New Volvo chief looks to double global sales

Volvo’s new chief executive is looking to more than double the Swedish carmaker’s sales within a decade by expanding in China and regaining lost ground in the US and Europe.

Stefan Jacoby said that Volvo, now owned by the parent company of Chinese carmaker Geely, also planned to streamline its product range and simplify its production as part of a new strategy due to be completed within six months.

“It’s better to concentrate on a few nameplates and bring them into consumers’ consideration, than having a copy of what others do,” Mr Jacoby told the Financial Times in an interview.

“We have a good chance in the next 10 years to grow up to 800,000 vehicles if we do our China strategy right and if we grow back again in the US and Europe.”

Mr Jacoby, formerly Volkswagen’s head of US operations, became Volvo’s chief executive on August 16 after Zhejiang Geely Holding Group sealed its $1.3bn purchase of the brand from Ford Motor.

Volvo sold about 330,000 cars last year and aims to sell about 380,000 this year.

Its biggest market is the US, but its new Chinese owner wants to build three plants in China to expand Volvo’s sales in the world’s largest vehicle market.

Mr Jacoby added that he had hired Richard Monturo of La Comunidad, a Miami-based brand strategist, to help redefine Volvo’s brand.

Volvo’s boss, who worked with Mr Monturo at VW and Mitsubishi, said he was “one of the world’s best brand strategists” who would bring “a totally different angle than our original Nordic tradition”.

“Based on the foundations we have, the history we have, he will help us define what the brand Volvo should stand for, what is the future brand position, what kind of customer we want to attract,” Mr Jacoby said.

Volvo’s chief executive said that the brand, known best for building safe and practical cars, “got lost a little bit” in recent years.

Mr Jacoby added: “In the first six weeks, I recognised that when I asked 20 Volvo people what positioning was, I got 20 different answers.”

Volvo was “too complex right now”, he said. At the factory in Ghent, Belgium, where it makes large vehicles, for example, it produces 63 different kinds of fuel tanks.

Mr Jacoby said it was still an “open question” whether Volvo would seek partnerships with competing automakers to pool costs.