Automotive supplier Brose Fahrzeugteile (D-96450 Coburg; www.brose.de) aims to grow sales by 50% to EUR 2.7 bn within the next five years. With an anticipated growth of 2% this year, total sales of the group will be around EUR 1.8 bn in 2003. The company reports that some 80% of its turnover is achieved in the door business division and 20% in the seat business division.

Brose aims in particular to intensify its involvement in North America and Europe. By 2008, said Michael Stoschek, chairman of the board of management, the company intends to build seven new production plants worldwide. The first US door system plant is scheduled to go on stream in Chicago, Illinois, before the end of 2003. Two other plants for door systems and seat adjusters are to be built by 2004 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama / USA, and in Canada. Building work will also continue on the new North American headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan, the centre of the US automotive industry.

Expansion is also the name of the game in Europe. The closure systems plant in Wuppertal, which Brose acquired from Robert Bosch (D-70049 Stuttgart; www.bosch.de) in November 2002, is to be expanded by 2005 to become the company´s competence centre for closure systems at a cost of around EUR 30m. Finally, in Novy Jiem, in the eastern part of the Czech Republic, EUR 40m is to be invested in a facility with 150 employees for the production of closure systems and seat adjusters.

Brose manufactures around 20% of its components itself. The Group operates its own plastics injection moulding plant for technical parts at its headquarters in Coburg. At present, 17 machines are deployed in the clamping force range between 100 and 3,500 kN. The product portfolio includes guide rollers for window regulators and encapsulated metal parts. About 150 million plastic parts leave the factory annually.