Swiss engineering group and car parts supplier Georg Fischer aims to more than double sales in China in five years as the rapidly-growing domestic economy boosts demand for its products.

The company targets to boost sales in China to about 7 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion) in 2015, from around 3.2 billion yuan last year by increasing market coverage, adding new plants and developing new products in the Chinese market, said CEO Yves Serra yesterday.

He was in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, where the company's GF AgieCharmilles machine tools unit inaugurated a new 80 million yuan (US$12.5 million) plant that is capable of making 1,000 million machines annually. China is the world's leading market for machine tools.

The company's GF Piping Systems unit will open another pipe manufacturing facility this week in Haining, Zhejiang Province.

"The inauguration of the two new plants in China shows our strong commitment and strong confidence in the Chinese market," Serra said.