STA, 7 December 2021 - The foundry LTH Castings officially launched a new production line for aluminium components for powertrains of all-electric BMW cars on Tuesday in its Ljubljana facility. The company said on the occasion that the new line brought new jobs, and labelled it as a new step towards transition to e-mobility and digitalisation.
Since 2019, LTH Castings has invested more than EUR 50 million in the expansion of production facilities for components of e-powertrains in the Ljubljana plant alone, the company said.
The new production line will produce and process various lightweight aluminium parts for powertrains of the fifth generation BMW eDrive technology.
The production technology follows the demands of BMW Group for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and resource consumption in the entire car production chain, LTH Castings said.
No rare earth elements are used in the production process, which is fully digitalised and follows the product from the beginning to the end of its lifecycle.
Today's ceremony was attended by Frank Wimmer of the BMW Group and Gertrud Rantzen, the head of the management board of the Slovenian-German Chamber of Commerce.
LTH Castings director Andrej Megušar said on the occasion that the company was a long-term partner of the BMW Group, adding that "we systematically follow market requirements and progress in e-mobility".
The new production line brings "additional long-term and sustainable jobs". It currently employs around 50 people, while up to 150 employees are expected to work in the production of components for e-powertrains by 2023.
LTH Castings notes that the expansion of the plant in Ljubljana is an example of a successful transformation of the former production complex of the company Litostroj towards e-mobility and digitalisation.
The building that is more than 70 years old has been fully renovated and expanded, adding 20,000 m2 of production space to more than 50,000 m2 of the existing production space at the Ljubljana facility.
The LTH Castings group, which is based in the Slovenian town of Škofja Loka and also has a facility in nearby Trata, employs almost 2,000 people in Slovenia, and an additional 1,200 people in its subsidiaries in Croatia and North Macedonia.
