On September 19, 2008, the 300,000th car rolled off the assembly lines at Kia plant near Zilina since the launch of volume production in December 2006. The 300,000th car happened to be the most popular version Kia cee’d_sw in Kompass blue colour with the diesel 1.6-litre engine and manual transmission which was dispatched to a customer in Austria.
“The successful continuation of production is a result of hard effort of all our employees and thanks to that we continue to fulfil our production plan for this year. I am very glad that we are achieving current efficiency over 98%. While reaching a high level of quality, we can provide a unique 7-year warranty to our customers on all models produced at our plant,” said In-Kyu Bae, President and CEO Kia Motors Slovakia.
Kia Motors Slovakia managed to accomplish its production plan in 2008 while producing over 150,000 until September 22. The estate version Kia cee’d_sw composed the largest share - 35% of total production in 2008. The most popular was the Black Pearl colour with share of 24% on production and the most favourite engine was the diesel 1.6-litre engine which comprised over 28% of all orders. In 2008, Russia became the biggest market for Kia Motors Slovakia with over 19% dispatched cars followed by UK and Germany with over 7% share of production each.
In 2007, Kia Motors Slovakia successfully introduced all three versions of Kia cee’d and the SUV model Sportage. This year Kia plant concentrates its attention on increasing the production efficiency on assembly lines over 98% barrier. Company managed to reach the 100% efficiency of utilizing the maximum capacity on daily shift last week, which means that one car drove off the production lines every minute.
Kia Motors Slovakia is Kia’s first ever European plant. The company directly employs over 2,740 qualified operators and staff in two manufacturing shifts. Currently, Kia in Slovakia produces three
versions of Kia cee’d – a five-door cee’d hatchback, an estate cee’d_sw and a three-door sporty pro_cee’d along with an SUV model Sportage. At the end of this year, the company will introduce
production of eco_cee’d, which due to small but significant modifications to the base vehicle results in much improved fuel consumption and reduced CO2 emissions while still delivering a lively,
spirited and entertaining drive.
