Less than three years after its opening, Mercedes-Benz' youngest plant in Kecskemét, Hungary has passed another important milestone.
20 Jan 2015 | 2210 Views | By Autocar Professional Bureau
Less than three years after its opening, Mercedes-Benz' youngest plant in Kecskemét, Hungary has passed another important milestone. With the official start of production of the Mercedes-Benz CLA Shooting Brake, the second model series to be exclusively produced in Kecskemét after the Mercedes-Benz CLA is rolling off the line. Plant ...
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Less than three years after its opening, Mercedes-Benz' youngest plant in Kecskemét, Hungary has passed another important milestone. With the official start of production of the Mercedes-Benz CLA Shooting Brake, the second model series to be exclusively produced in Kecskemét after the Mercedes-Benz CLA is rolling off the line. Plant manager Thomas Geier and his team welcomed Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and Markus Schäfer, Member of the Divisional Board Mercedes-Benz Cars, Manufacturing and Supply Chain Management, to the celebration of the start of production.
The CLA Shooting Brake is initially available with two diesel engines, four petrol engines and the all-wheel drive system 4MATIC and costs around 600 euros more than the four-door coupé. The first cars will be arriving at European dealerships in March 2015.
"The start of production of the new CLA Shooting Brake marks the fifth successful ramp-up for our new generation of compact cars in our global production network", said Schäfer. Around 150,000 B-class and CLA-class vehicles were produced in Kecskemét last year, and 300,000 units have rolled off the line at the plant since it started production in 2012. In this way, the Hungarian plant makes an important contribution to the growth of the particularly successful compact car segment within the global production network of Mercedes-Benz Cars. Unit sales rose by 24.7 percent to 463,152 A-class, B-class, CLA-class and GL-class vehicles sold in 2014. Mercedes-Benz has never delivered so many compact vehicles to its customers in a single year.
The CLA, which is produced exclusively in Kecskemét, has been very successful in its single most important market, the USA, almost doubling unit sales to 27,000 vehicles in 2014. Overall, Mercedes-Benz sold more cars than ever before last year. The brand with the star delivered 1,650,010 vehicles to customers (+12.9 percent), thus posting the fourth record year in a row.
"The team in Kecskemét has proven that 'made by Mercedes-Benz in Kecskemét' is a true success story. From the very start, we have been making top-quality cars in accordance with our global production standards,” said SchäferThomas Geier added: "Of course, the entire team of the plant is especially proud for the opportunity to produce the CLA and now the CLA Shooting Brake exclusively for customers around the world. We are aware of the responsibility that comes with it and will build on our achievements to date with consistent top performance."
Investments in the Kecskemét plant to date total around a billion euros. After spending 800 million euros on the construction of the plant, the company has continued to develop the facility, last year above all in preparation for the production of the CLA Shooting Brake. This involved recruiting and intensively training many new employees, which brought the workforce to almost 4,000 people by the end of 2014.
Mercedes-Benz' global compact car production
The premium compact cars of Mercedes-Benz are based on a common front-wheel drive architecture and are currently produced in a flexible production network of the Rastatt and Kecskemét plants. The B-class was the first of the new generation of products whose production started at both plants (Rastatt: since September 2011, Kecskemét: since March 2012). The new A-class has been made in Rastatt since July 2012. The second product from the Kecskemét plant has been the CLA which started to roll off the line in January 2013. Production of the GLA compact SUV started at Rastatt in December 2013. The fifth new compact model, the CLA Shooting Brake, has been produced at Kecskemét since January 2015. The Rastatt plant has been operating in three shifts since October 2012, the Kecskemét plant since May 2014. Thanks to the common architecture, all models can be produced in any order or volume at either location, which allows volumes to be distributed within the network depending on the current level of demand on the market.
Since August 2013, additional capacity has been available for the production of the A-Class in the form of a contract manufacturing arrangement with Finnish production specialist Valmet Automotive. In addition, production of the GLA for the Chinese market will start in the first half of 2015 at the Beijing production location of BBAC (Beijing Benz Automotive Corporation – a joint venture between Daimler and its Chinese partner BAIC Motor).