Austrian steelmaker voestalpine AG has announced that it has received a major order from a German premium car manufacturer, worth almost €563.8 million, and, in order to process this order, it will invest over €30 million in the construction and extension of its sites in Mexico, Germany, Romania and China.
Voestalpine stated that the majority of the investment volume needed to fulfill the new order, around €15 million, will go towards establishing a new production facility for high-quality automotive components in Aguascalientes, Mexico. The plant is scheduled for full operation in July 2018. The company is also investing over €14 million in expanding existing automotive plants in Germany and Romania. A total of nine assembly lines will be installed at the company’s subsidiary voestalpine Automotive Components Dettingen GmbH in Germany, which is responsible for managing the new order at the various sites, and in Arad, Romania. These assembly lines are scheduled to be fully operational by January 2018.
Meanwhile, another part of this major new order will be processed in China. Voestalpine Automotive Components Langfang near Beijing is a new site in China, another growth market for the company. Here, too, several assembly lines will be installed in a leased hall. The first deliveries are expected to leave the production site by the end of May 2017, with the plant fully operational by November 2018.
According to voestalpine, this major automotive order marks an important step for its Metal Forming Division, expanding its activities in the mobility segment which is scheduled to account for around 50 percent of group revenue by 2020.