International Automotive Components (IAC) says it has not experienced difficulties in finding staff for its new tailored interiors plant at Opole in Poland as it looks to ramp up production, eventually employing around 550 workers.
Access to labour and wage inflation has been a source of fierce debate in the Visegrad 4 countries of Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland, but IAC’s choice of Opole near the city of Wroclaw played a key role in securing the necessary numbers of staff.
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“We have not had issues to find people at all,” IAC president Europe and RSA, Jonas Nilsson told just-auto at the supplier’s Opole plant. “I visited around ten sites and one of the main reasons was it [Opole] was not a very established area.
“I had experienced Katowice and Wroclaw and it was very difficult to find people. We are the first automotive supplier to come here. Being OK today [concerning salaries] does not mean being OK next week.”
The IAC Europe chief highlighted how the region was continuing to attract significant numbers of OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers and he anticipated the need for a further 100,000 positions to be filled.
“That is going to be a challenge and there will not be one answer to it,” added Nilsson. “There will have to be cooperation across boundaries. We try to be very fast out of the boat here and do things that have not been done before.
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By GlobalData“We did not come here specifically for low labour cost, but for the pool of talent. The answer for Eastern Europe is not labour costs – it is more a strategic area.”
“The other answer is Manufacturing 4.0 – that needs to start now. Automisation, digitalisation, that will come faster than anyone anticipated.”
IAC has invested more than US$20m into the Opole site, which will cover an area of more than 27,000 m² (290,625 square feet) at its completion. The facility went from groundbreaking to start of serial production in seven months and is positioned to accommodate further growth.
IAC Opole will serve as the company’s Centre of Excellence for tailored interiors. For example, exploring new synthetic materials with natural leather look & feel and antiseptic features will be of importance, as the usage rate of vehicles increases with the trend of shared mobility.
“We are almost a complete premium supplier, by chance or by luck, it is what we are and we want to be the premium interior supplier of choice; we don’t have to change much to really become that,” added Nilsson.
“One of the absolute trends we see on the market is the growth of the premium segments and tailor-made parts [are] growing significantly, almost 40%.
“It is going to be around 9m cars in the next few years, not only leather, some customers are a bit concerned [about that], so there is a big growth in artificial leather and premium textiles. We have the answer to that trend, which is the Opole plant.”
The move towards fully autonomous vehicles is expected to drive demand for handcrafted solutions and integrated electronic functions in interior components and IAC expects an increase in wrapped products globally by 38% from 6m to around 9m in the next three years.
Headquartered in Luxembourg, IAC’s 2016 sales were US$6bn. The Group operates more than 50 manufacturing facilities in 18 countries.
