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FPK opens its new plant in Brazil
FPK designs and manufactures structural and aerodynamic composite components, providing solutions for lighter vehicles, optimising their aerodynamics and collaborating with their customers in the reduction of fuel consumption and emissions. This company, with its headquarters in Zamudio (Bizkaia), has today 24 February, opened its recently purchased production plant in Curitiba, capital of the state of Paraná (Brazil).
The Brazilian plant, FPK do Brasil Componentes Automotivos, currently employs 90 people, and is an excellent platform to be able supply the company’s products to the Brazilian market.
New dimension
The inauguration of this plant sees the culmination of FPK’s business resizing process. For 18 years, the Bizkaia-based firm was a joint venture between MONDRAGON and the German group Aksys GMBH, engaged in the manufacture of fibreglass reinforced plastic parts. FPK’s process of growth started with the buying out of the German partner and the subsequent conversion of the company into a co-operative enterprise. A mixed co-operative, with the participation of the worker-members of FPK themselves, MONDRAGON Inversiones and the co-operative Batz. Then, in July 2010 the deal was sealed for the takeover of a plant with 120 people in Peine (Germany), close to Hannover, in order to be able to meet directly from Germany the demand there for structural and aerodynamic products in reinforced plastic for the automotive sector.
Moreover, at the end of last year an agreement was reached to purchase a new plant in Curitiba (Brazil) which has been inaugurated today in the city located in the south of Brazil. This has enabled FPK to put its business on a global footing and triple its turnover and the number of jobs in its companies in less than one year.
At the same time, the market has reacted positively to this business operation and during the second half of the year a lot of new orders were won which will undoubtedly consolidate FPK’s new business project.
FPK Lightweight Technologies
These three production plants form part of MONDRAGON’s Tooling and Systems Division, in a new line of business created at the heart of the Batz co-operative and called “
FPK Lightweight Technologies”. This is a new strategic commitment on the part of Batz which will enable the firm to significantly increase its technological capacity aimed at the use of new composite materials to reduce vehicle weight and, therefore, their CO2 emissions.
The following companies are among its main clients: Volkswagen, Seat, Skoda, Audi, PSA, Renault, Volvo, Jaguar and Land Rover.
The forecasts for this year, 2011, point to a turnover of €37m and a workforce of 265 people. For 2015 the aim is to achieve a turnover of close to €50m and intensify the development of new products by means of innovation processes and co-operation between its companies.
José Mari Aldecoa, President of the General Council of the MONDRAGON Corporation, stressed the importance of this project as a complementary activity in the automotive sector, in which MONDRAGON provides employment for close to 10,000 people and this year will post a turnover of close to €1.5bn. He also highlighted the example of FPK “which has gone from being a local joint venture to become an international group after the takeover of the German parent company and the subsidiary in Brazil”.