Volvo Cars plant in Flanders is electrifying at full speed
The arrival of electric models at Volvo Cars’ plant in North Sea Port Ghent has created some 1,000 additional jobs in 2022. As a result, more than 7,000 people are now working at the largest car factory in Belgium and the country’s northern region of Flanders. “Several hundred more jobs will be added in 2023,” adds Volvo Car Gent CEO Stefan Fesser. Electrification is running at full speed at the Swedish company’s Flanders-based site, that much is certain.
Assembling battery packs
The additional jobs are mainly linked to one specific activity: assembling battery packs. At the Volvo Car Gent site in Flanders, battery cells from China – and in the future from Gothenburg in Sweden – are assembled into a package for the plug-in hybrids and fully electric cars that are rolling off the assembly line in ever-increasing numbers. “Combustion engines are delivered ready-made,” explains Stefan Fesser. “But for e-cars, we assemble the battery packages ourselves.”
Leader in electrification
Over half of the 193,000 Volvo cars made in Ghent throughout 2022 were equipped with a plug. More than a third were fully electric cars and another 33,000 of the XC40 vehicles made in Ghent were plug-in hybrid vehicles. These figures make the Flanders-based factory the undisputed electrification frontrunner within Volvo Cars’ global network of production plants.
Expansion going through the roof
In the summer of 2022, Volvo announced plans to further expand its battery assembly capacity in Ghent. To this end, the company will add a new 5,000-square-meter building. Construction is scheduled to be completed in 2023, after which the plant will be able to make battery packs for a whopping 150,000 full-electric cars per year.
The expansion announcement came shortly after an earlier project that earned Volvo Cars a nomination for the 2022 Foreign Investment of the Year Trophy presented by Flanders Investment & Trade (FIT). Why this investment in Flanders made the Swedish company a deserved nominee? Discover the answer in the video below.
Reported by
newspaper De Tijd
