Motor manufacturer investing abroad in Turkey, home country of Brazil
Some research suggests that two eggs a day is a perfect source of protein. If so, this news is for your good health: WEG, the major motor manufacturer based in Brazil, made two announcements this week updating its investments abroad (for more on this, make sure to check out our International issue of Electrical Apparatus, coming in October).
Firstly, WEG provided an update on expanded operations to its new facility in Dilovasi, Kocaeli, Turkey: the 75,000 square foot space will be used to provide technical support for customers and to assemble products.
Turkey is one of WEG’s key markets for motors and drives and offers the perfect location to achieving additional growth in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, North Africa and Central Asia markets. The new expansion offers potential for OEMs, as the industrial sector in Turkey continues to grow each year. More than 30 per cent of the Turkish GDP comes from the industrial sector.
The facility, which has been in operation since August 2022, will continue to support this growth and allow WEG to develop close relationships with both local suppliers and commercial partners. In addition, WEG will be able to expand its market coverage in low and medium voltage electric motors — a high-demand product in the region.
Secondly, WEG has announced new investments to expand production capacity and increase the vertical integration of production processes in its manufacturing site in Itajaí, Brazil (pictured below).
The investment includes the construction of a machining shop, specifically for the manufacture of spare parts and frames for variable frequency drives, soft starters and special switches for machine manufacturers. In addition a new plugs and sockets factory will be constructed to serve the building’s infrastructure market, both commercial and residential. The projects will be carried out on the same manufacturing site where the company already has e-House, dry type transformer and wire drawing factories, and will receive an investment of R$ 87 million. Work is expected to be completed by the end of 2024.
"The manufacturing site of Itajaí was planned to allow a gradual and continuous increase in production capacity and meet the expansion needs of the company for several years. Thanks to the favorable environment for business and the abundant offer of transport companies in the region, we will be able to take advantage of the network already developed by WEG, maintaining logistics costs and consolidating cargo with the other Company businesses in Itajaí and Jaraguá do Sul “, explains Manfred Peter Johann, Managing Director of the Automation Business Unit. The new plug and sockets factory will have approximately 5,500 m² of floorspace and the new machining shop will have 12,000 m². Both were designed in such a way as to allow the gradual increase, in a modular way, of the production capacity.
With the new investments, WEG will expand its capacity in Itajaí and should open more than 300 new jobs in the next 5 years. Currently, the company has more than a thousand employees in its operations at this location.
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