SMP announces a 30 million euro investment in catalonia

the indian automotive part and materials company samvardhana motherson group took advantage of the visit of the catalan president, artur mas, and his minister for enterprise and occupation, felip puig, to its headquarters in the city of noida, to officially announce a 30 million euro investment package in catalonia.

smp, which is the result of the peguform group integration in the samvardhana motherson group in 2011, will invest the major part of this sum in creating a new plant in polinyà (vallès occidental), where it had previously operated an older and smaller plant, which was destroyed in a fire last september. the facilities it also has in ripollet will receive a further investment of some 5 million euros. the company has other additional plants in martorell and castellbisbal.

samvardhana motherson group is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of vehicle parts, external and internal plastic car fittings, accessories and automotive paint. in catalonia it operated four plants with around one thousand employees, until the polinyà plant burnt down in a fire. however, the company decided to rebuild the destroyed plant, improving and expanding it, to increase its production in catalonia and where it will use these new installations to produce automotive paint. furthermore, 5 million euros will be used to boost activity in the company’s ripollet plant, where it produces powder-metal sintered parts.

the entire investment comes to around 30 million euros and will create about 100 hundred jobs, according to information provided by andreas heuser, the company’s european and american delegate. catalonia is a strategic location for the company where it sells about 20% of its production to catalan automotive companies. “we want to maintain close links with catalonia because we’ve been working together for a long time to our mutual benefit. we’ve a strong company presence there and undoubtedly after artur mas’ visit we’ll see further opportunities for collaboration”, stated heuser after his meeting with the president of the government of catalonia.