Automotive supplier Sumitomo Electric Bordnetze (SEBN) has chosen Cuenca for the construction of its first production plant in Spain. The facility, which will be devoted to the manufacture of high-voltage wiring harnesses for electric cars, will generate around 350 highly skilled jobs when it starts operations, expected by the end of 2025.

The choice of the city in Castilla-La Mancha responds to SEBN's strategy of locating its production centres geographically close to its customers. In this case, the highly automated facility will supply the Seat plant in Martorell (Barcelona) and the Volkswagen plant in Navarra. This way, the Japanese manufacturer will also support the Volkswagen Group's Future: Fast Forward project, which aims to turn Spain into a European centre for electric mobility.

Long history
Although this is Sumitomo's first plant in Spain, and the 23rd in the world, the company already has a long history in Spain, where it has had a customer service centre in Pamplona since 2001 and a development centre in Martorell since 2012.

SEBN's plant in Cuenca will manufacture the high-voltage cable harnesses for the family of urban electric cars that the Volkswagen Group plans to produce in Spain. These high-voltage wiring systems are used in electric cars to accommodate the power and data needs of the vehicle, being  used in areas such as charging cables.

Highly automated production
The highly automated production process will, according to the Japanese company, improve product quality and volume, as well as provide the required production capacity. This concept of automated production for high-voltage cabling systems has been developed by SEBN together with other companies in the Sumitomo Electric Group. This optimisation has occurred as the complexity of products in the high-voltage industry has decreased.

The company's executive director of supply chain management for the Naphtha region, Sven-Uwe Niemann, argued that the investment in this production plant "secures SEBN's position as one of the leading suppliers of high-voltage harnesses for the Volkswagen Group", adding, "This new centre will also bring highly skilled jobs to the region."

^{Photo: SEBN}