Guilford Performance Textiles, a manufacturer of warp and weft knitted automotive textiles, has announced it has entered into an agreement with NNG, a subsidiary of YanFeng, Inc., one of China's leading automotive interior manufacturers, creating a joint venture to provide textiles to the Chinese automotive industry. The new venture, Anhui Guilford Automotive Interiors Co., Ltd., is located in the city of Huainan in the Province of Anhui in eastern China.

Guilford says the alliance will allow it and NNG to leverage complementary strengths to achieve expanded market coverage and enhance the companies' competitiveness in the world's fastest growing automobile market. Anhui Guilford will benefit from the collaboration of Guilford's trusted technical and manufacturing expertise in automobile textiles and NNG's extensive client base in China's automotive industry, Guilford said. The joint venture currently employs 230 workers and manufactures seating products for Chery Automobile, JAC Motors, Shanghai Volkswagen, and a number of other customers in the region.

"China's automotive industry is experiencing explosive growth. With this joint venture, Guilford is now ideally located to offer our fabrics and engineered products to Chinese manufacturers," said Shannon White, Chief Executive Officer of Guilford. "Following a comprehensive review of expansion opportunities in China, we are pleased to have found an extraordinary business partner in NNG that we expect will offer long-term growth opportunities in China. This is the first step in what we anticipate will become a significant expansion into the Asian market for Guilford."

Guilford manufactures automotive body cloth products for seating bolsters and inserts, seatbacks, door panels, package trays, and trunk liners; and textiles for overhead systems, such as headliners, pillars, package trays, sunshades, and sun visors. The company also produces technical textiles, including casket lining fabric, loop/closure systems for personal care/hygiene and industrial abrasives markets, blankets, mattress pad toppers, shoe linings, gaming table fabrics and billiard cloth, window fashions, automotive aftermarket products, and electrostatic dissipative fabrics; incontinence pads, braces, and surgical towels for medical use; and lamination services.

Guilford is headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina with sales offices in Michigan, Mexico, Germany, Spain, France, Japan, China and the United Kingdom. Manufacturing facilities are located in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, France and the United Kingdom.

YanFeng group integrates scientific research, development, manufacturing, sales and service supporting the global automotive market. YanFeng group's sales are said to be more than $5B.