This year, AGCO Feucht GmbH (formerly FELLA-Werke GmbH) has two reasons to celebrate: In 2018, the site is celebrating its 100th anniversary, taking a look back on a long success story in the agricultural engineering industry. At the same time, parent company AGCO is making a €10.5 million investment in the future. The ground-breaking ceremony on 13th September 2018 to mark the start of the plant expansion underlines the success of forage harvesting technology from Feucht.
The site is undergoing its greatest period of change in more than 20 years, which involves building production facilities for three brands, increasing the production capacity by up to 40% and converting company processes to an SAP system. In late 2016, the first machines marketed under the Fendt and Massey Ferguson brands left the production line at AGCO's European centre of excellence for forage harvesting in Feucht. Since then, the brand mix has been changing significantly. The overall number of machines produced has risen considerably and there is now an increasing demand for larger machines. The capacity of the Feucht site is reaching its limits.
The ground-breaking ceremony to mark the start of the plant expansion was held on Thursday 13th September 2018. The State Minister in the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Energy and Technology, Franz Josef Pschierer, the District Commissioner of the District of Nuremberg, Armin Kroder, and the Mayor of Feucht, Konrad Rupprecht, broke the ground for the new mower hall, together with the AGCO management team.
As well as a positive market environment, the current growth is also supported by the AGCO Full Line strategy. "With the integration of the baler and self-loading trailer business from Lely as well as the established forage harvesting machines from Feucht, AGCO is now offering a complete and extremely attractive product range on the market," says Dr Rob Smith, Senior Vice President and General Manager of AGCO EME. "By investing in our European centre of excellence for forage harvesting in Feucht, we are laying the foundations for the planned growth over the coming years."
The company is investing €10.5 million. The biggest addition is a new assembly hall measuring 4000 m², where the entire range of mowers will be produced in future. The flow of materials is also being optimised in order to meet growing demands on capacity.
"The new plant layout will enable us to manufacture products on time and respond more flexibly to the increasing demands of the individual markets," says Uli Nickol, Managing Director of AGCO Feucht GmbH. He takes stock of a successful ground-breaking ceremony involving representatives from the world of politics, contacts from the company's direct business environment and, of course, management and members of staff from AGCO.
