BEIJING, March 22 (Xinhua)-- Chery Automobile, a major Chinese carmaker, inked a deal with an Argentinian company here on Thursday on jointly launching an assembly plant in Uruguay.

The factory, a joint venture between Argentina SOCMA Group and Chery, is expected to have an annual sales volume of 25,000 vehicles.

The first model produced by the factory will be TIGO, Chery's first SUV model, and other models will be introduced later, according to a Chery spokesman.

It is the first time a Chinese company has invested in an automobile manufacturing plant in South America.

Chery, the fourth-largest carmaker in China's fast-expanding market, sold 305,200 vehicles last year, up 61 percent from 2005, according to previous reports.

Chery has made great efforts to build CKD factories abroad in recent years. Aside from the existing assembly plants in Iran and Russia, it is looking for such opportunities in Egypt, Romania, Turkey, Indonesia, Italy and Argentina.