DRAFT Japan's Yazaki set to vacate Czech auto cables plant

Pilsen, Czech Republic – Japanese car component maker Yazaki Corporation is set to close a wiring harness production plant near Pilsen in the Czech Republic before the end of 2019.

It has occupied the 25,000m2 unit at Borská pole, close to the city centre, from 2001, moving car and truck cable harness operations to the Czech site in the years since then.

More recently, the plant has manufactured products for customers including BMW and Daimler and MAN trucks.

But in the past two years, Yazaki Corporation has switched much of its European wiring production to new and expanded plants in the south east of the region.

In September 2017, the group’s Yazaki Wiring Technologies business launched its first unit in Serbia where it has begun to transfer work from Pilsen.

This €25-million project comprising a 30,000m2 plant began operating with a 500-strong workforce supplying cable components for Daimler trucks.

By the end of this year, the Šabac plant is due to employ 1,700 and will earn around €120 million per year from exports to auto markets across Europe, the Tokyo-based group forecast.

Yazaki is expected to employ a total workforce of 3,400 by June 2020.

Elsewhere, Yazaki has continued to expand its production of vehicle cable harness products in Bulgaria where in 2017 it opened a new wiring components plant at Krepost, near Dimitrovgrad.

This unit, Yazaki’s third locally, makes electronic parts for Mercedes cars and with further development stages with investment totalling €23 million by this year is due to create 3,150 jobs.

Yazaki Corp. is a global automotive parts supplier focusing on wire harnesses and instruments and components such as connectors and terminals.

It operates other south eastern European production plants in Romania and Croatia.