ZKW Group increased its consolidated group sales to €1.34 billion. At the same time, the corporate staffing level grew to around 9,700 employees at the end of 2018.
The ZKW Group operates internationally at a total of eight locations – two of them in Austria plus sites in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, China, India, Mexico and the USA.
2018 marked the end of an eventful year for ZKW.
On 3 August the sale to LG was legally concluded with the “Closing” and ZKW secured a new owner in the form of the South Korean high-tech group. “Due to ZKW’s rapid development, we had to look for a suitable solution for the future and found LG to be the ideal partner to sustain our growth and continue to be successful. We can use common synergies in many areas and are delighted that the cooperation with LG is very positive”, says Oliver Schubert, CEO of ZKW Group GmbH.
The ZKW Group expanded its electronics competence center in Vienna Neustadt as early as January 2018 and heralded the largest site expansion in ZKW’s history with the ground-breaking ceremony at the Slovakian site in Krušovce in September. The production area of the plant has been almost doubled from 42,000 to around 80,000 m2. In addition, the Chinese site in Dalian is currently being expanded in 2019.
ZKW also has a lot in the works for 2019. In addition to plant expansion, the focus will be on innovation in order to remain at the forefront of technological development. The product portfolio will be expanded beyond the main headlamp to include solutions for all outdoor lighting applications. ZKW is already working on solutions to cover strategic cornerstones of vehicles, particularly with regard to autonomous driving. Sensor technologies integrated into the lighting systems will enable a 360-degree panoramic view in the future
