UK – A £10m ($13.5m) investment will enable the establishment of a new facility which can e-coat up to 3.5 seats per year. The paintshop is due to come online in August 2017.
The facility will allow Brose to bring the seat coating process in-house, which the company says will improve production scheduling and “ensure all structures are finished to the highest quality standards”. The paintshop will require an extra 30 personnel, increasing Brose’s UK workforce to over 1,000 by the end of 2017, compared with 500 in late 2014.
“This is a massive show of faith in Coventry and confirms the group’s intention of giving us the technology and capability we need to take on and successfully deliver higher volumes for our UK customers,” commented Juergen Zahl, managing director. He said the new paintshop will allow “a much more joined-up approach to assembly”.
Zahl added that three new model platforms will be introduced in 2017, pushing the annual production of front and rear seats beyond 2m for the first time in the company’s 30-year history. In the past 12 months, Brose UK sales have risen 25% to £195m, including contracts with Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan and Toyota.