Chinese carmaker BYD announced on Friday that its newly built face masks plant has grown into the world’s largest, and its capacity accounted for a quarter of the total on the Chinese mainland since early February.

“A production line for high-quality face masks requires about 1,300 parts for various gears, chains, and rollers – 90 percent of which we made ourselves,” said Sherry Li, BYD director-general

The company can produce about 5 million face masks a day and the volume is increasing as much as 500,000, while it makes about a dozen of mask-producing machines per day – set to boost output considerably.

Determined to help combat the novel coronavirus outbreak, BYD began to help in the production of masks and disinfection gels in late January. But during the Spring Festival period, BYD found it was unable to obtain mask-making equipment rapidly enough, so it decided to make its own machines.

A mass-production line was built on Feb 8 in one of the company’s factories in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. The company said it took only seven days for a dedicated team of more than 3,000 engineers to complete the research and development of mask production equipment and manufacturing processes.

“A production line for high-quality face masks requires about 1,300 parts for various gears, chains, and rollers – 90 percent of which we made ourselves,” said Sherry Li, BYD director-general.

Many Chinese manufacturers, especially those in the electronics and automobile industries, have established or converted factories to make face masks. Foxconn Technology Group, the world's largest multinational electronics contract manufacturer, has achieved a daily production volume of about 2 million.

grace@chinadailyhk.com