Faurecia Purchase Should Keep Fortwo Plant Running

PARIS – The French plant that builds the Smart Fortwo A-segment car appears to have a future now that Faurecia has purchased Plastal France, the supplier of plastic body parts at the factory’s internal supplier park.

Faurecia has had an option to buy Plastal France for two years, but with the current Fortwo’s lifespan coming to an end, the parts-making giant apparently waited to buy the smaller supplier until it was assured the Plastal operation had a future.

The successor to the Fortwo is being jointly developed with the next Renault Twingo as part of an agreement among Renault, Nissan and Daimler.

When they announced their agreement in April 2010, Renault and Daimler said 2-seat versions of the Twingo and Fortwo would be made in Hambach, and 4-seat versions of both cars would be made in Novo Mesto, Slovenia, where Renault has built the current Twingo since 2007. The current Twingo is only a 4-seater, and the Smart only a 2-seater.

Renault’s Novo Mesto plant in Slovenia built 146,482 Twingos last year, and Hambach produced 103,560 Fortwos. The Hambach factory’s annual capacity is only 200,000 units, making joint production there unlikely, says Inovev SA analyst Jean-Michel Prillieux.

Plastal France now becomes part of Faurecia Automotive Exteriors, as Plastal Germany and Plastal Spain did in 2010. Plastal, a Swedish supplier, went into bankruptcy in March 2009, a victim of the economic crisis that slashed production in Europe.

When Plastal CEO Roar Isaksen announced the failure, he said the company had “turned over every possible stone in our attempt to avoid this situation, but today our last efforts failed.”

Plastic Omnium, another French body-panel supplier, bought Plastal’s operation in Poland, and Faurecia purchased the German operations, which had control of the subsidiaries in France and Spain. The Hambach plant is about 4 miles (6 km) from the German border.

Plastal has been the supplier of Smart body panels since the factory opened in 1998. When the second generation arrived in 2007, Plastal added a new process, Mold-In-Color, in which panels come out of the injection mold in black, white, red, lemon or orange, needing only a clearcoat before being assembled. Parts in other colors are painted.

“Faurecia now has acquired the 15 years of Plastal’s experience,” a spokesman says, indicating it plans to offer the technology to other customers.

Until now, Faurecia’s automotive-exterior business has been mainly bumpers and front-end modules, although with its earlier purchases of Plastal Germany and Spain, it also is making body panels for Daimler and Iveco trucks.