Road paver factory opens
05 January 2011
A new € 100 million manufacturing plant for German road construction machine firm Joseph Vögele is now in operation at Ludwigshafen am Rhein.
Having been completed in 18 months, the plant is described as the world's most advanced production facility for road pavers. It will be producing and shipping machines for what claims to be the worldwide market leader in that sector. Vögele is a part of the Wirtgen Group.
The company's new site covers 370000m2, some 60000m2 of which are occupied by the indoor production halls in which road pavers and screeds are produced and assembled for the worldwide market.
The same Vögele workforce will be used, as the new headquarters in the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region are just a few kilometres away from the former site in Mannheim. The company said this testified to the Wirtgen Group's commitment to maintaining facilities in Germany, strengthening the region and safeguarding the workplaces of the employees.
The decision to build on a greenfield site gave the Board of Management, the planners and architects a free hand when designing the factory layout. The assembly area, for instance, has been completely redesigned. Production of all paver models has now been switched over to flow production. Also, Vögele said the cycling of the individual lines had been further optimised to improve the synchronisation of the various paver models on an assembly line.
The company said that a number of major individual investments were also made - one particularly noteworthy example being the new powder-coating facility. At a cost of € 4,2 million, this represents the company's largest investment in machinery. The new facility is described as particularly eco-friendly as no solvents are used in the coating process.
In addition to the production facilities, there is a new Centre for Training & Technology (CTT). The centre provides in-house training for roughly 40 apprentices as well as advanced training for machine operators of Vögele road pavers.
Construction of the new Vögele factory has been completed and the production of road pavers is now in full swing. Guests at the official inauguration included some 1000 Vögele employees plus guests from the political and industrial world.
The Wirtgen Group comprises Wirtgen, Vögele, Hamm and Kleemann, with headquarters in Germany and local production facilities in the USA, Brazil and China.
