Gurit Creates New Composite Components Unit

The new unit will be focused on land transportation component applications in the premium automotive, bus and rail markets. From a sales reporting perspective, Gurit now subdivides its business into Composite Materials, Composite Components and Tooling.

The company will convert the automotive section of its Newport facility into a new technology centre with product development, prototyping and production of smaller volume specialty manufactured components. The Hungarian site is projected to be more of a volume manufacturing site for pressed and manual components with a higher degree of automated production lines and technologies.

To achieve this industrialisation level in Hungary, Gurit is launching a new investment program during 2015 costing over £4 million at the company`s existing production facility in Hungary. The investment is aimed at supporting the setup of substantially automated production lines for automotive components as a manufacturing base for the latest project win as well as series production of future automotive projects in Europe.

The company also announced plans to cut between 80–90 jobs at its facility on the Isle of Wight, UK between March and April this year. The company say this is due to customer projects being completed and the associated lower workload for manually manufactured automotive parts. Gurit estimates that restructuring cost for the downsizing and associated measures will amount to approximately £300.000.