MAN Truck & Bus is upping the pace of its transformation and the associated expansion of its plant in Krakow, Poland. The foundations were laid in a celebratory ceremony. MAN is investing around €130 million in the expansion of this production plant. By September 2022, the production site is set to be extended by around a third in terms of area and fitted out as a volume balancing plant for HGVs. This will enable some 300 vehicles and cabs to roll off the production line with employees working in three shifts. To guarantee the sustainability of the site, a new bio-energy source will ensure that the plant is CO2 neutral in the future.
“The expansion of the plant is a key building block in our transformation. Our changes to the production network will make us significantly more competitive in these challenging times. In Krakow, we are creating an extremely flexible and variable site, which will allow us to manufacture everything from our light to heavy goods vehicle ranges on one production line,” explained MAN CEO Alexander Vlaskamp.
This work will just about treble capacity at the Krakow plant. After the expansion, Krakow will employ around three times more staff than before, creating some 1,500 extra jobs at the Polish site. The area of the extended plant will increase from 24 to around 41 hectares.
“Going forward, Krakow will be a highly efficient site and will play an even more important role as a volume-balancing plant. Around three quarters of all MAN trucks and HGV cabs will be assembled here in the future. The ‘Truck Modification’ section is also to be built in Krakow, where our trucks can be individually tailored to our customers’ requirements,” said Michael Kobriger, MAN executive board member responsible for production.
This expansion work will see the construction of a new 26,000 m2 hall for cab production and another 10,000 m2 hall for the Truck Modification Center. This will enable MAN to offer the entire truck range with maximum quality in Krakow and the main plant in Munich, where space will be used for mixed production of conventional and electric trucks. Krakow and Munich will be a pair of strong partners in the truck network.
The company and works council agreed on these and many other measures in April 2021, as part of MAN’s transformation process. The whole package of measures is aiming for an increase in MAN revenue of up to € 1.7 billion. This should provide the company with the latitude it needs to be able to make targeted investments in its future.