November 25 (SeeNews) - Sweden-based car safety equipment manufacturer Autoliv plans to relocate all production and inflator-related engineering from Vargarda, Sweden to existing locations in Romania and France.
This is one of several strategic measures being taken to increase productivity and efficiency within Autoliv Europe, the company said in a press release on Tuesday.
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The plan is to relocate the majority of production to Autoliv’s existing facility in Brasov, Romania, and the inflator engineering to existing locations in France and Romania.
"This is part of a global optimization initiative that Autoliv initiated earlier in 2020. These are very hard decisions to take but necessary to meet our customers’ demands and to remain competitive. We will do our best to support our employees during this transition period," Autoliv president Frithjof Oldorff said.
The company employs 400 at Vargarda, of whom 150 will be affected by the planned relocation that is expected to be finalized during the first half of 2024.
These plans are subject to ongoing union negotiations, Autoliv noted.
Autoliv will maintain an important presence in Vargarda, hosting the company’s global innovation center focusing on research, development and engineering of existing and new products within the mobility safety area.
Autoliv opened its first factory in Romania in 1997 - in the county of Brasov. The company now has ten production plants and two engineering centers in Romania. The company employed 8,581 in Romania as of end-2019, data from the Romanian finance ministry showed.
Autoliv was born in 1997 from the merger of the Swedish company Autoliv AB and Morton Automotive Safety Products, a division of U.S.-based Morton International. It is now present in 27 countries worldwide, employing over 65,000 people. Its 2019 sales amounted to $8.54 billion (7.192 billion euro).
($=0.8414 euro)
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