US automotive components supplier Flex-N-Gate (Urbana, Illinois; www.flex-n-gate.com) currently has two large ongoing projects that total around USD 330m (EUR 280m) in investment. The company is building and expanding production plants in Detroit, Michigan, and Grand Prairie, Texas, which will supply front-end modules, headlamps and body parts to GM and Ford.

While the new Detroit facility is already half finished, Flex-N-Gate only recently began the refurbishment and expansion of its existing buildings in Grand Prairie. Of the USD 175m investment planned there, USD 70m will be used for injection moulding and other manufacturing machines.

Production is due to move in the summer from the nearby plant in Arlington to Grand Prairie, and the administration department will follow in December. The Arlington site – also the headquarters for Texas – will be closed. By 2020, the initial 172-strong workforce in Grand Prairie will rise to nearly 700. Flex-N-Gate currently produces front- and rear-end modules for several models of the GM brands GMC, Cadillac and Chevrolet in Arlington.

Excluding the two new sites, Flex-N-Gate, which has sales of more than USD 6 bn, operates 62 production sites worldwide with a workforce of around 24,000. Since 2017, the company has been operating seven bumper and front-end module production lines in Europe that Plastic Omnium (Levallois / France; www.plasticomnium.com) had been forced to sell as a requirement from the European Commission for the takeover of Faurecia's (Nanterre / France; www.faurecia.com) Automotive Exteriors division – see Plasteurope.com of 10.04.2017.