Plastic fuel systems specialist Inergy Automotive Systems (Paris / France; www.inergyautomotive.com) is building two new fuel systems plants in Asia. The company, a 50:50 joint venture between Plastic Omnium and Solvay, will build one plant in the Beijing region in China and the other in the Chennai region in India.

The Beijing plant will supply a Hyundai production facility which is expected to start up in July 2010 and the Chennai plant will supply a car plant in the Bangalore region operated by a large Japanese car manufacturer, Solvay said in a statement.

Inergy is speeding up its investment in China, which last year became the world’s largest automobile producer with a 17.2% market share, compared with 14.7% for Germany and 14.6% for the US, according to Solvay.

The joint venture opened a new factory in Wuhan in China’s Hubei province last year – see Plasteurope.com of 07.07.2008. The factory supplies fuel systems to plants operated by Nissan and BMW, and will supply a plant operated by PSA from the end of this year. Inergy also has plants in Korea, Japan and Thailand.