A few weeks after serial production at its new plant in Changzhou / China began, automotive supplier Benecke-Kaliko (Hanover / Germany; www.benecke-kaliko.com) has celebrated the facility’s official opening. The Contitech (Hanover; www.contitech.de) subsidiary will produce mostly surface materials for automotive interiors at its second plant in China. It will specialise on the manufacture of "Acella Eco” and “Acella Eco green”, which are used in back-foamed covers for seats and arm rests.

Both Benecke Changshun ECO Trim and the group’s other production site in Zhangjiagang are joint ventures with Chinese partner Jiangsu Changshun. The plant currently has about 100 employees, but the workforce is to be raised to 150 in the coming months, who will focus on producing about 10m m² of surface materials each year. The new plant in effect doubles Benecke-Kaliko’s output in China. The German group invested a total of EUR 40m in the facility and its adjacent R&D hub – a figure that board chairman Dirk Leiß says constitutes the largest investment in company history. And there are already plans to expand the site.

The group’s other site in Zhangjiagang, operated by Benecke-Changshun Auto Trim, specialises in the production of compact and foam film sold under the “Xpreshn” and “Xpreshn HD” brand names. The subsidiary also produces Acella materials, although the plans are to gradually shift that output to Changzhou.

Benecke-Kaliko now operates seven production sites in Germany, Spain, Poland, China and Mexico. The company’s 2,500 employees posted sales of EUR 549m in 2015.