Following a series production start last June, the new PSA Peugeot Citroën plant in Trnava, Slovakia was officially opened on Thursday (19 October) by Peugeot chairman Thierry Peugeot, and CEO Jean-Martin Folz.
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The plant is building the 207, supplementing production in Spain and France and is on a 192-hectare site with four main facilities – stamping, body-in-white assembly, painting and final assembly – with capacity to produce 300,000 cars a year in three shifts. It currently employs 3,300 people operating two dhifts.
An adjacent supplier park is already home to a dozen equipment manufacturers and Slovak-based suppliers include Faurecia, Valeo, Premier, Inergy Automotive Systems, Magna Donnelly, Visteon and Sofitec.
Announced in early 2003, the project to build the site and launch production of the first model required EUR700m. Construction and installation of the plant and production lines were completed in just two years, with pre-production early in 2006.
PSA said the new plant incorporates all the benefits of its ‘Convergence Plan’, a continuous improvement process implemented across the group’s manufacturing base. This ambitious strategy is primarily designed to instil the best manufacturing and technical practices developed in the group and the industry as a whole.
“The strategy has already enabled the Trnava plant to deliver remarkable performance in team training, production methods, just-in-sequence logistics and overall production quality,” the automaker claimed. “In this way, the plant has successfully paved the way for the deployment of the efficient, standardised PSA Peugeot Citroën manufacturing system.”
“The Trnava project has met all our objectives in terms of both plant construction and the hiring and training of our teams,” said Folz. “By meeting the deadlines and delivering excellent production quality, the plant is off to a very good start.”
Folz added he was grateful to Slovak authorities for actively supporting the project over the past three years and helping to make it a reality.
Some 90% of the plant’s construction was done by Slovak companies.
In euro terms, two-thirds of the plant’s purchases (excluding engines and gearboxes) are made in Slovakia and other eastern European countries.
