Cooperation negotiations at Fortaco Ostrobothnia Oy completed

Fortaco Ostrobothnia Oy cooperation negotiations that were launched in January have now been completed. During the negotiations decision was made that the component manufacturing at Kurikka site will be ended and transferred to other Fortaco sites. Kurikka site cabin and other assembly business was decided to be further streamlined and developed. The Cabin manufacturing will be centralized to one location at Kurikka and the development actions started will continue as planned.

Cooperation negotiations will be resulting in smaller amount of reductions than estimated. That is because the market situation is believed to improve during the spring time. Employment contracts of 75 blue-collar workers and 17 white collar workers will be terminated and the amounts include pension solutions. The temporary lay-offs continue as planned.

Fortaco is Europe’s largest manufacturing partner for the engineering industry. The company’s main products are high performing welded and machined components, ready-to-install operator cabins and fully-assembled machines and equipment for the world’s leading engineering OEMs. The company employs 2,600 persons at 11 sites in Finland, Poland, Estonia, Hungary and Slovakia. Expected pro forma net sales for 2012 are EUR 270 million.


New surface treatment line at the Holíč, Slovakia is in operation

Fortaco has opened successfully a state of the art surface treatment line for serial manufacturing at the Holíč site in Slovakia. The site manufactures ready-to-assemble cabins for mobile machines for its globally-operating OEM customers.

The investment enables Holíč to optimize its order to delivery process, lowers the surface treatment related costs considerably and facilitates quality control in the surface treatment process. With the new surface treatment is achieved surface treatment class C-5 M (ISO12944-6), which fulfills the needs of the most demanding applications such as in mining, construction or material handling cabins needed.

On the automatized line, the cabin frames go through zinc-phosphating and cataphoresis process before powder painting. The line meets the high quality and environmental criteria of the automotive industry and the original equipment manufacturers. Fortaco has used a similar coating process at the Kurikka cabin site in Finland since 2006. The total investment value was worth about three million Euros.