Daimler invests 300 mln euro in extending the gearbox assembly line in Sebes

Star Transmission, Daimler’s Romanian subsidiary, started at the end of last week, the construction works of its new gearbox assembly facility in Sebes, Alba County. The existing production line will be, therefore, extended, investments allocated to this new project coming to approximately 300 million euro. According to the company, in the gearbox plant which will be operational in 2016 will work about 500 people at assembying its nine-speed automatic transmission 9G-Tronic.

”The additional assembly lines in Sebes optimally complement the production in the Mercedes-Benz Unterturkheim plant. These have also an important contribution to the profitability of our long tradition domestic manufacturing”, Markus Schafer, member of the Board of Mercedes-Benz Cars division, Production and Supply Chain Management, said. Due to increasing demand, Daimler faces an overloaded production in Germany and in order to support it, the original production unit in Sebes had already been extended – in early-January 2014, Star Transmission inaugurated an investment worth some 40 million euro in increasing the capacity of its transmission assembly line.

Star Transmission was established in 2001 with the Cugir-based unit where the production line includes gears, pinions, shafts or chain tensioner. There is also based a technology center which incorporates the prototypes production and a training center. The unit located in Sebes was inaugurated in July, 2013 operating an assembly line for the five-speed automatic transmission. In the extended facility mentioned above, Star Transmission, runs the assembly of  the 7G-DCT dual clutch transmission, previously manufactured only in Stuttgart. Currently, the company employs about 1200 people.