10 December 2006

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Elica inaugurates its new Mexican plant in Queretaro


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An important new development for the growth and consolidation of the Elica Group’s presence in the Americas is taking place in Queretaro, eponymous capital of the central Mexican region, where the new ElicaMex factory is to be inaugurated today.  ElicaMex will be manufacturing products aimed at the markets of North, Central and South America.
Nine months on from when the first stone was laid in the Mexican city’s Amplacion del Parque Industrial, the Fabriano group’s new plant intends to start production with high-range items, then gradually extend its output to include a complete product range.
Covering an area of 16,000 square metres, including 2,000 metres of office space, ElicaMex will involve 500 employees over the next three years.
By 2008, the Queretaro factory is expected to be regularly producing around 500,000 pieces per year.
In the world economic panorama, Mexico is one of the countries with the ability to attract an ever-growing share of European capital and investment and thus provides an excellent jump-off point for the USA market. The Italian Group’s design models are becoming increasingly popular in the USA, where the company has been present for over a year through its cobranding deal with the distributor Zephyr.
ElicaMex has also recently forged an important partnership with MABE, one of the main producers of domestic appliances in the Americas with a turnover of over 3 billion dollars, for a distribution deal covering Mexico, South America and Canada with products to be sold under the various brand names of the MABE group. Also under discussion with MABE is an agreement for the distribution of Elica Collection brand products in the same countries. The agreement, scheduled to start in January 2007, will last for five years and should bring in an annual turnover of approximately 10 million dollars.
Other ElicaMex agreements include an important deal to the value of 50 million dollars over the next four years involving the production of a new line of decorative hoods for “The Home Depot”. THD has over 2,000 retail outlets in the USA and also operates in Canada and Mexico.
Elica’s Mexico project, designed as it is to provide direct production to the Americas, reinforces an ongoing Group policy to build awareness about design items, focusing over the last few months on an American market that only really began to show a strong interest in this area a few years ago.
A dynamic stimulus to the development of this interest has been provided by the showroom the Group opened last winter in San Francisco’s Design Centre zone, where Elica shares a large loft space with its partner Zephyr in Alameda Street.