Shanghai (ZXZC)- Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen Automobile Company LTD (DPCA), Groupe PSA's major joint venture in China, saw its sales in March plunged 55.19% year on year to 15,831 units, sliding for 9 consecutive months, according to a sales report from Dongfeng Motor Group.

For the first quarter of the year, DPCA also faced a sharp year-on-year drop of 57.7% with 34,658 vehicles delivered in total.

The joint venture's annual sales in 2018 hit a new low of 253,359 units since 2009, a year-on-year slump of 32.89%, while also plunging 64% compared with the peak level of 704,000 units in 2015. The steep downturn forced DPCA to lower its annual sales target for 2019 to 235,000 units, only accounting for 49.34% of the 2018 goal. However, after a quarter of a year passed, the company only achieved 14.75% of the slashed goal.

Amid the sales downturn, DPCA also experienced a constant unrest in personnel structure. On December 14, 2018, the company announced a sweeping personnel reshuffle, involving Su Weibin, DPCA's general manager, who would be removed from his current position. 

Meanwhile, the management structure had been somewhat changed as well. The automaker got two positions of business deputy general manager off the executive committee and the marketing headquarters would no longer exist. What's more, directors of Dongfeng Citroen and Dongfeng Peugeot would head the executive committee and directly report to new general manager. 

Massimo Roserba, current general manager of DPCA, and Li Jun, the company's executive vice president, stated at a business meeting in February that the carmaker will deepen the marketing innovation to break the bottleneck in sales modes and reduce costs across whole value chain in 2019. In addition, in order to improve cash flow, alleviate the operational burden and get the quality reputation better, the company is going to decrease the vehicle inventory and solve the key quality issues.

The PSA Group will globally launch 116 new cars across its five brands – Peugeot, Citroën, DS, Vauxhall and Opel – by 2021, as part of its 'Push to Pass' strategic plan. In China, DPCA plans to roll out at least one all-new model per year for each brand and upgrade the existing models. Last month, Dongfeng Citroen released two new models—the C3-XR and the C4L, while Dongfeng Peugeot launched the all-new 508L.