ACE to move entire production from Spain to Dej

Spanish group ACE, a producer of electrical parts for the car industry, has announced it will start building a new plant in Romania over the next two weeks.

ACE Automotive Grup recently announced plans to relocate all its Spanish plants to Romania by 2011. This new plant represents the first move in the relocation process.

Total investment in the new plant will be worth over 1.5 million euros and it will have a usable area of 3,000 square metres.

"We plan to start production by November. We considered other locations as well, but the city of Dej was the only place where we had strong support from the local authorities. Another reason for choosing the area was that the unemployment rate is quite high," Adam Amburs, ACE Romania general manager, told ZF Transilvania.

He believes the total area will reach 10,000 square metres. "We chose to acquire such a large area because we want the possibility to expand." The group currently has four plants in Spain and one in Mexico.

Sales in the first four months of the year were some 30% higher against the same period last year, the company says. For 2005, the company in Romania has forecast that its turnover will rise by 40% to over 6.8m euros.

"Our growth forecasts are a consequence of the fact that we enriched our product portfolio. At the moment we are working for the new Seat Leon model due to launch on the Romanian market in two months'' time. At the same time, the Seat Altea and Toledo models, for which we started to work in the summer, have also contributed to the growth estimates for this year," said Ambrus.

By the end of the year the company estimates its number of employees will rise to 2,000, an increase of 400 from current levels. "This is the only way we can meet market demands," Ambrus added.

ACE Group was set up in 1992 and posted 105 million euro turnover in 2003. It has seven factories, five of which in Spain, one in Mexico and one in Romania.