The KIRCHHOFF Automotive plant in Mielec/Poland celebrated its 25th anniversary. Started with a small press shop, a welding shop and a separate area for shipping preparation, the site has now developed into KIRCHHOFF Automotive’s largest plant with over 900 employees.

For the official part of the celebrations on May 27, the management and shareholders hosted a press conference and then showed guests from politics and business as well as business partners around the plant.

When Dr. Jochen F. Kirchhoff decided to build a new production plant in Eastern Europe in 1998, there were initially a number of arguments against Mielec as a location: the considerable distance to material suppliers, steelworks and service providers, the distance to customers’ plants and, to top it all off, an underdeveloped road infrastructure and major challenges in connection with the planned EU accession. However, the fact that the city was characterized by the metalworking industry and therefore many engineers and technicians in the region had experience in the sector spoke in favour of the location. Following mass redundancies in the air zone, unemployment stood at almost 20 percent – an experienced workforce was therefore available for the new plant. Construction began in 1998 and production started in 1999. Initially, the site had a small press shop with several mechanical presses, a welding shop with several robot-assisted welding stations and a separate area for shipping preparation.

Today, the Mielec plant supplies products to a large number of customers in Europe and has a diversified product portfolio in terms of customers (volume and premium customers), vehicle classes (passenger cars, commercial vehicles) and drive sources (combustion engines, hybrids, electric vehicles).