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ZF Group opens new £70m engineering technical centre
ZF Group has officially opened its new purpose-built technical and office facility in Shirley, Solihull, following a £70m investment. Located in the heart of the UK’s automotive industry, the new 220,000 sq ft state-of-the-art technical centre will house 700 existing staff with room for future growth.
The site features the latest technology and infrastructure for developing advanced solutions for the automotive sector including autonomous, electric and connected mobility projects. ZF says the facility’s design and architecture underpins the group’s sustainability strategy for carbon neutrality by 2040, with the site also enabling greater customer collaboration.
ZF Group has opened a new engineering technical centre in Shirley, Solihull, following a £70m investment / Picture: ZF Group
Opened by West Midlands Mayor, Andy Street, the facility is a multi-disciplinary location, collaborating on the development of key technologies and system solutions for active and passive safety systems, as well as electrified powertrain solutions and race engineering. The location is also designated as ZF’s global centre of competency for servo-motors design and in these future-oriented areas, ZF will be increasing the number of R&D specialists at the Shirley location.
Peter Lakie, ZF senior vice president and key account executive, said: “I am very proud of the teams here: those that had the vision and those who worked to bring that vision to life. The passion of these people, with the support of all the staff, has created a state-of-the-art sustainable environment that promotes collaboration and agile working practices.”
Alastair McQueen, site lead at the Shirley facility, said: “In the design of this new facility, we made a specific effort to ensure that we created a future proof working environment which was going to encourage collaboration and agile working practices – one that would enable and accelerate the development of new technologies in support of ZF’s next generation mobility goals.”
ZF has a number of businesses at other locations in the UK and supports vehicle manufacturers and industry customers locally and globally.