PSA Peugeot Citroen posts all-time high sales in 2010

French carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen announced on Thursday that its global sales in 2010 reached a new all-time high of over 3.6 million units, including vehicles and complete knock-downs (CKDs), mainly boosted by robust business in China and Latin America.

Its sales of assembled vehicles alone rose 9.8 percent to 3.13 million units, and CKD sales climbed 39.4 percent to 477,000 units, the automaker said in its annual report.

Although European market was down 4 percent overall, growth in China of 30 percent and in Latin America of 14 percent contributed more than sufficient to make PSA's balance sheet even. "Global automobile markets rose by an aggregate 10 percent in 2010," the company said, adding that emerging markets' positive pull was as strong as in 2009.

Jean-Marc Gales, Executive Vice President of the company, said the 2010 result was very satisfactory "with a large proportion of our sales now generated outside Europe."

"The Chinese market was again the leading driver of global automobile sales in 2010," said the French automaker, adding that the Chinese market is "expected to maintain double-digit growth in 2011."

Having consolidated its market share in China at 3.3 percent, the PSA has adopted "ambitious growth objectives" of expanding the market share to between 8 percent and 10 percent based on cooperation with Chinese counterparts Dong Feng and Chang'an.