May 11 2005
Alcoa has announced that its AFL Automotive business has opened a new development center in Plzen, Czech Republic, for the design and development of high quality automotive electric and electronic distribution systems for European automakers. The new center enhances AFL Automotive's capabilities to support its customers regional and global development efforts and builds upon AFL Automotive's capability to leverage resources in the important product development area.
"This new location will primarily serve Skoda, one of the most well known European car brands, but will also enable AFL Automotive to attract new customers in the emerging Central and Eastern European automotive markets. By locating decisive development centers near our customers, we believe we offer the most value, best quality and cost-effective solutions to our customers by collaborating and blending our global engineering resources," said Martin Freiberger, senior vice president AFL Automotive-Europe. "We share the passion of our customers for their products, and we want to help them reach more end users with a competitive vehicle package," he said.
The new Development Center employs 30 technical and other professionals. It joins AFL Automotive's other Development Centers in Germany, UK, China, North American and South America.
AFL Automotive has had a presence in the Czech market since 2001, supplying electrical distribution systems, subassemblies and components to automotive customers including Skoda, Volkswagen, DaimlerChrysler and others from its location in Stribo, Czech Republic.
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