Lotus expands new HQ to house employees
The facility, in the city’s Chaoyang district, was designed as a nine floor base for the Lotus’ good manufacturing practices (GMP) certified production operations, R&D centre, storage space and administrative offices.
Now however the Chinese pharmaceutical firm has announced it will spend and additional $9m to add to 90 to 120 homes for management level employees in a bid to ensure the loyalty of its workforce as CEO Zhongyi Liu explained.
"In order to better motivate our staff, the Company decided to add two new stories onto current construction for apartments. These will be given to managers at all levels of the Company to ensure a stable and loyal team, which we expect to benefit the Company financially in the long run.
Lotus began work on the new headquarters in March last year as part of an effort to increase its net revenues to $150m (€110m) by catering for the China’s rapidly expanding pharmaceutical market.
In total, Lotus will have spent around $48m on the 366,000sq ft facility which, at current market price of $344 per sq ft in Beijing, is worth in the region of $120m.
Construction of the new HQ was originally due to be accompanied by the construction of a manufacturing and storage facility on a 167-acre plot Lotus owns in Inner Mongolia.
However, last December Lotus said it had abandoned that part of the project in favour focusing its efforts on completion of the Beijing project which, according to the firm, is still on track for June.
And, last month, Liu said Lotus was seeking a buyer for the Mongolia plot, explaining the firm has made infrastructure investment at the site and “given current local market conditions, we believe we can sell the land at a price higher than our cost."
