Maflow Mexico, the newly launched subsidiary of Poland's Boryszew SA automotive components manufacturer, has begun supplying car parts for European giant Volkswagen AG.
At its new plant in Silao in Guanajuato state, central Mexico, the company started producing dedicated parts for VW's Teramont model sport utility vehicle in November. This production project is expected to run through until 2022.
Maflow, Boryszew's auto pipes production offshoot, completed and immediately started up the 13 million euros ($13.8 million) 4,712-square-meter greenfield plant for air conditioning parts and assemblies in the first quarter of 2016.
The Mexican plant, intended to partner primarily with VW, Boryszew's major global partner, is expected to attract a number of valuable contracts from other car manufacturers in NAFTA markets.
Already, the Maflow facility has started manufacturing tubing and assemblies for the Audi Q5 model project platform. It supplies these to Audi's Mexican car assembly plant 500 kilometers to the south in Puebla.
“Building and validating the factory itself has succeeded really smoothly. Just as we planned, we have also been implementing the project for Audi for several months. We produce AC wiring for the Audi Q5 model,” said Marek Mroczkowski, managing director of the Maflow branch of Boryszew group.
Additional land has been set aside at the Silao site, where Maflow initially employed 25, for later capacity expansion.
“We are focusing our efforts on continuous increase of production capacity of Silao plant. Quarter 3 [2016] paved the way for key projects for VW — Tiguan, Jetta and Golf models. It will provide us with the expected volumes for VW and Audi,” explained Cezary Pyszkowski, a Boryszew board member responsible for developing the automotive segment in a statement.
Warsaw-based Boryszew, Poland's biggest auto supplier saw its group net profits rise strongly during Q3 to 38.3 million euros ($40.6 million) which is 24.8 million euros ($26.3 million) ahead of the equivalent period last year. Group sales worth 931 million euros ($988.7 million) for the 2016 quarter were down from almost 970 million euros ($1.03 billion) the same time last year.
Boryszew said the result proves “the group's positive condition.” Maintaining its automotive sector companies are central to the group and Maflow has performed “significantly better.”
With its new plant in Mexico, Maflow now operates 11 production units around the world, the others located in Spain, Italy, France, Brazil, India and China.