November 20, 2015 Updated 11/20/2015
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Richard Higgs
SMG A Samvardhana Motherson Group interiors plant. The company’s mirror division is expanding in Europe.
Indian auto parts supplier Samvardhana Motherson Group (SMG) has announced further investment plans for its production plants in Hungary.
In addition to a major project to construct a green field 100,000-square-meter car bumper molding plant at Kecskemét in central Hungary, which the company announced earlier this year, the company is planning to expand capacity at its Mosonszolnok rearview car mirrors facility.
That is one of two national production units, the other one at Mosonmagyaróvár near the Austrian border, and an engineering centre at Győr, operated by group mirrors business Samvardhana Motherson Refletec (SMR).
In October, SMR signed a “strategic cooperation agreement” with Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó on behalf of the government, the 64th company to have entered into a long-term partnership and commitment to creating jobs in the country, the Hungarian government said in a news release.
Partner firms have already created 200,000 jobs, employing 15,000 more workers since they entered into strategic cooperation deals, according to the government.
SMR, which has a current Hungarian workforce of 1,525, is committed to enlarging the SMR Automotive Mirror Technology Holding Hungary Kft. plant at Mosonszolnok as part of group Hungary investments of almost 100 million euros ($ 107.2 million).
SMR has 25 production plants and three research and development centers worldwide. In the business year 2014-2015, it posted sales of almost 1.28 billion euros ($ 1.36 billion). It has 22 percent of the market share in automotive mirrors and supplies almost every major vehicle manufacturer in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia.
Together with the Hungarian planned bumper plant of SMR’s sister company Samvardhana Motherson Peguform (SMP), a producer of plastics components and system modules for vehicle interior and exterior, the group intends to create a total of 450 jobs nationally.
Land was purchased for the new Kecskemét facility this October and construction will begin soon. That site is expected to begin production during the final quarter of the 2017-2018 fiscal year, according to the Indian group. The plant is due to supply the local Mercedes Benz assembly plant from 2016.
Meanwhile, SMP has invested further in Spain where it installed a 2.3 million euro ($ 2.45 million) car bumper painting line for its mouding operation at Polinya, near Barcelona, due to begin production in 2016.
