Magneti Marelli Automotive Lighting and the Carnia Industrial Park have inaugurated a new production site for car lighting electronics in Tolmezzo.
The new construction covers an area of more than 5,000 square meters (53,819.55 square feet) of production space, and is located within the Carnia Industrial Park, which created the infrastructure, as part of the Automotive Lighting industrial complex in Tolmezzo, a Magneti Marelli center of excellence on an international level for rear lighting.
The entire Automotive Lighting complex in Tolmezzo currently covers an area of 102,500 square meters (1,103,300.82 square feet), with a certified production capacity of more than 4.8 million pieces a year. The Tolmezzo site is the most important industrial entity in Carnia and one of the most important in Friuli Venezia Giulia, with a number of employees which has grown to 1,100 employees since 2011. Over the past three years, Magneti Marelli Automotive Lighting has invested approximately 25 million euro (approximately $26 million USD) in production capacity in the Tolmezzo plant.
The Tolmezzo site is situated in a logistically strategic position with respect to automotive production centers of Central-Eastern Europe, supplying to some of the most important brands worldwide, such as BMW, Daimler-Mercedes, the FCA group (Alfa Romeo, Jeep, Maserati), Ferrari, Ford, GM-Opel, the Volkswagen Group (Audi, Porsche), Volvo and others.
In addition, the central body of the main production plant and the new pavilion, the complex also includes a research and development center, which, since 2000, has designed approximately 320 different types of light for approximately 200 car models, and has introduced important innovations, including lights with a “light curtain” effect, 3-D and other dynamic solutions. The same industrial perimeter also contains the mould development and production center, which constitutes a unique concentration of process technology and produces moulds for rear lights for all Automotive Lighting plants worldwide.
Present at the inauguration were the president of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, Deborah Serracchiani; Pietro Gorlier, managing director of Magneti Marelli; Mario Gollino, president of the Carnia Industrial Park; and Francesco Brollo, the Mayor of Tolmezzo, as well as the most important institutions in the area and the management of Magneti Marelli and Automotive Lighting.
The Carnia Industrial Park and the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region have worked together to optimize the time necessary to find a functional solution to meet the new requirements of production in Tolmezzo. In particular, the Carnia Industrial Park has created the new production infrastructure, which is leased to Magneti Marelli through public procedures.
“This new productive infrastructure allows us to further optimize the performance of the plant and render it even more competitive in a market context which demands continuous innovation and the highest levels of quality,” said Gorlier “The Tolmezzo plant as a whole is an example of excellence which has favored the introduction of LED technology and electronic solutions for rear lighting for cars. This new structure is not only a productive pavilion with cutting-edge machinery, but also a concrete example of constructive and intelligent teamwork between institutions, territorial bodies and private industry. Teamwork which has created benefits for the territory and the company, and which exploits the quality of an extraordinary workforce.”
“We are delighted and proud to be able to present this new productive infrastructure which supports a process of growth and consolidation for Magneti Marelli Automotive Lighting in Carnia,” said Gollino. “The increase in job positions and the effects on income constitute the scale of the immediate social and economic return on the investment made, with the contribution of the region. The professionalism of the personnel of the Carnia Industrial Park and the companies selected for the construction of the infrastructure has allowed the obtaining of this fantastic result in full respect of the timing and the quality of the technological solutions adopted.”
The new pavilion was created in light of the constant growth of Automotive Lighting in Tolmezzo over the past few years, in terms of business volume and contracts, and the consequent necessity to gain more space.
In particular, the new construction will allow for even more efficient and linear organization of the areas for the creation of plastic components and circuit boards, as well as the creation of new areas to be adapted to logistics and assembly. The growing complexity of LED lighting requires ever more integration between traditional light components (plastic-molded parts and wiring) and new electronic components.
