Shanghai Volkswagen Automotive Co will open its sixth factory on the Chinese mainland as it drives to entrench its leading market position and tap the long-term growth of the domestic automobile market.

The plant, located in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, will begin production in 2014 and able to produce 300,000 cars per year. It expects to employ several thousand employees by 2015.

Shanghai Volkswagen, the venture of Volkswagen AG and SAIC Motor Corp, has been boosting production capacity on the mainland, the world's largest auto market, despite sales growth in the industry last year estimated to plummet to a tenth of the pace in 2010.

Karl-Thomas Neumann, president and CEO of Volkswagen Group China, said the Ningbo plant is part of a 14 billion-euro (US$18 billion) investment program on the mainland by 2016.

"With our unprecedented investment program, we intend to increase our capacities in the mainland to three million vehicles per year by 2013/14," he said.

"We will introduce more models to the market and strengthen our leading position in the Chinese passenger car market," Neumann added.