In Bursa, roughly 90 kilometers south of Istanbul at the foot of the Uludag mountains, Renault and Fiat operate production sites in joint ventures with local partners. The new ThyssenKrupp Tailored Blanks plant will be busy from the start with supplies to the two manufacturers. It will make blanks for the Fiat Linea notchback sedan and a small van for Fiat and PSA as well as for the notchback version of the Renault Megane. The facility will initially operate one laser welding line for linear tailored blanks. The 4,000 square meter building offers space for further expansion.

Tailored blanks are sheets of different thickness, steel grade and coating which are joined together by laser welding. At the car plant, the blanks can be formed for example into doors, tailgates, floors and side members. Tailored blanks are designed from the outset to match the loads in the finished part. Today, up to 25 percent of a car body can be made from tailored blanks, resulting in weight reductions of 20 to 40 percent.

ThyssenKrupp Steel, the parent company of ThyssenKrupp Tailored Blanks, developed tailored blanks in the early 1980s. In the meantime, as well as linear tailored blanks with straight welds there are also Thyssen Engineered Blanks with nonlinear welds, allowing the blanks to be matched even more precisely to the functions required in the finished part.

Source: Trade Press Release ThyssenKrupp Steel AG

ThyssenKrupp Steel will provide the industrial leadership of TWB, which furthers the integration of TWB into their worldwide tailored blanks network. By bringing together the tailored blanks activities, ThyssenKrupp Steel responds to the demand by automotive industry customers for a supplier with global presence.

The Mexican company Tailored Blanks S.A. de C.V. has its registered office in Puebla and supplies a local car manufacturer with customised, laser-welded steel sheets. The company was established in 2001 and has a workforce of 38 employees. TWB Company has a workforce of around 400 employees. TWB supplies the major US car manufacturers with tailored blanks. The company is based in Monroe, Michigan. There are also four additional production sites, two of which are also located in Mexico.

ThyssenKrupp Tailored Blanks GmbH is a subsidiary company of ThyssenKrupp Steel AG. In addition to their presence in Mexico and the US, ThyssenKrupp Tailored Blanks GmbH is also present with companies in China, Turkey, Italy, Sweden and the Czech Republic. In Germany, ThyssenKrupp Tailored Blanks operates three plants. Worthington Industries is one of the largest independent steel trading companies in the US.

Tailored blanks are sheets of different thickness, steel grade and coating which are joined together by laser welding. At the car plant, the blanks can be formed for example into doors, tailgates, floors and side members. Tailored blanks are designed from the outset to match the loads in the finished part. Today, up to 25 percent of a car body can be made from tailored blanks, resulting in weight reductions of 20 to 40 percent.

Source: Trade Press Release ThyssenKrupp Steel AG

Under the contract, ThyssenKrupp Tailored Blanks Sverige will set up a service center in Olofström which will mainly produce tailored blanks alongside cut-to-size sheets for Volvo Cars. The products will be further processed in the stamping plant operated by Volvo at the same site. Volvo employs roughly 2,500 people in the southern Swedish city. Under the contract the new service center will supply around 80,000 metric tons of sheet and tailored blanks a year.

ThyssenKrupp Tailored Blanks Sverige will invest more than 21 million euros in the service center, which will include two fully automatic laser welding lines for tailored blanks as well as an oscillating shear for blanking. Production is scheduled to start in late 2005 and the center will reach its full capacity in late 2006, when it will employ around 50 people.

Volvo Cars has been a customer of ThyssenKrupp Tailored Blanks for six years. In that time, deliveries have increased rapidly. That fact along with Volvo’s wish for local service were key reasons for the decision to locate aproduction site in Olofström. The move will further increase the international presence of ThyssenKrupp Tailored Blanks GmbH, currently already represented in Italy, Mexico and China as well as Germany.

Specialists intensively trained in Germany and under the leadership of Managing Director Oliver Bürgstein are currently producing samples for the Chinese automobile industry. Serial production will begin no later than the summer of this year. From 2004 the company plans to obtain its input stock, from which the tailored blanks are made, from Tagal – another joint venture from the house of ThyssenKrupp Stahl responsible for erecting a state-of-the-art hot-dip coating facility in Dalien, China. The customised prefabricated automobile parts are finally to be found in many makes of automobile well-known in Europe and intended for the booming Chinese market, above all VW/Audi, Ford, Citroen and General Motors.