Mercedes-Benz has started construction on a new engine plant in Poland, which will be the company's second facility for engines outside of Germany.
The company is building a 50ha plant in Jawor by investing €500m in the site and creating some 500 jobs.
It will be built with on Industry 4.0 standards and will use green production techniques.
Mercedes-Benz claims that the new engine plant will act as a new benchmark for engine production. It will be equipped with technology and use app-based applications in areas of personnel and energy management.
The plant is expected to use responsive production systems, which could enable a flexible approach to production, making possible to produce different engine variants on the same line. Production at the new plant is scheduled to begin in 2019.
Apart from production, the German luxury automaker claims to deploy resource-saving production processes, which will be developed together with energy suppliers, local authorities, solutions for CO2-neutral engine production. Daimler stated that it will deploy wind power, solar energy or biogas applications.
Mercedes-Benz Cars manufacturing and supply chain divisional board member Markus Schäfer said: “The new engine plant in Poland is a key element in the growth strategy of Mercedes-Benz Cars. With the new site in Jawor, we are ensuring the efficient supply of our vehicle plants with highly efficient engines.
“We are aligning our global production network towards the future and show that we are able to do both sprint and marathon: due to high global demand, we will be producing conventional engines for hybrid vehicles and combustion engines in increasing quantities meeting Mercedes-Benz's proven top quality, and at the same time we are preparing our production network for electric mobility in the long term.”
Poland's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economic Development and Finance Mateusz Morawiecki said: “Poland relies on foreign investors to strengthen our economic system with high-tech solutions. It is a very good news for all of us that Poland is a strategic investment location for a company like Daimler.
“The investment opens up entirely new business perspectives for numerous - especially regional - suppliers and also includes cooperations with universities and institutions for vocational training. Poland is becoming the European leader in terms of innovation and greenfield investment and is thus implementing one of the objectives of the Sustainable Development Strategy.”
