Chinese telecommunications equipment company ZTE announced, that it plans to set up a high technology industrial park in Hortolândia, 105 kilometres from the city of Sao Paulo in Brazil.

The City Mayor Ângelo Perugini signed the agreement in China in the presence of Brazilian President  Dilma Rousseff and  Hu Jintao, President of the People''s Republic of China, during the signing of bilateral agreements between the two countries.

“This unit will be responsible for servicing the whole of South America and it will consolidate Brazil as the operational center of the region. The industrial park, which includes a research and development center, production plant, training center and a logistics center, will also be ZTE’s first R&D center in Latin America,” said the President of ZTE Brazil, Yuan Lie.

Eliandro Ávila, CEO of ZTE Brazil, said: “ZTE is a practical example of how the integration among Chinese and Brazilian people might be rich and successful. ZTE’s Brazilian operation started in 2001 and since then it has reported annual average growth of more than 100% for the past three years”. He also added that the major contribution of ZTE to the Brazilian market has been innovation, bringing in high-value products to operators, and to customers.

Sources from the company estimate that investment in the project will cost US$250 million.