Plastic Omnium has opened a development centre in Lozorno, Slovakia, for its exterior and structural components operations.
With 1,300sq m of office space and 300sq m of laboratories, the centre employs 110 engineers and technicians from eight countries and will accommodate up to 160 employees.
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The centre hosts the main support services for the industrial development of automotive projects: computer aided design (CAD), styling, product engineering, industrial engineering, quality control, sales and purchasing. It works closely with the ∑-Sigmatech international research and development centre located near Lyon, France, and technological cooperation agreements have also been signed with the universities of Bratislava and Košice in Slovakia and Zlín in the Czech Republic.
About EUR2m (US$2.7m) was spent on the construction of this engineering centre, designed to optimise the performance of automotive projects by moving closer to the customer and to reduce development costs. The centre will work primarily with German carmakers, the group’s largest customers.
The group now has two automotive research centres in France, and 12 development centres in the major global car manufacturing regions (Germany, US, Japan, South Korea, Slovakia). A new research centre for fuel tanks and systems is currently under construction in France and a development centre for exterior components is being built in China.
