Start of construction for Brose North American Headquarters

Auburn Hills/Detroit (06/2003) At the beginning of June, Michael Stoschek, President and CEO of the Brose Group, and Jan Kowal, President of Brose N.A., together with leading members of Auburn Hills City Council, ceremonially turned the first spade of earth for the new Brose North American Headquarters. These premises are to be located close to Detroit where the Big Three DaimlerChrysler, Ford and General Motors are based. “With this new building we are laying the foundations for the expansion of our activities in North America”, said Michael Stoschek. Mari Harvey-Edwards, Mayor of Auburn Hills, described the planned extension of the company’s facilities as “a great honor for the town”.

Following the company’s internationalization in Europe at the end of the eighties, Brose began to step up its expansion activities in North and South America, South Africa and Asia in the early nineties. In 1993, the North American sales and engineering office in Auburn Hills was set up and the first production site for the North American market started operations in Querétaro, Mexico. In 1997, a second plant followed in Puebla.

As a result of the increase in business on the North American market, the sales and engineering office, Brose North America, now requires more space to be able to process new customer projects. The headcount at the location is also to increase from the current 150 employees to 260 by 2010.

In the next 14 months, some 7,000 square meters of floor space will be transformed into open-plan offices with flexible furnishing features and hot desking solutions as well as state-of-the-art testing facilities. The building is scheduled to be completed in August 2004.

Brose's first American door system factory is to start operations in Chicago by the end of the year with another two plants becoming operational next year, one in the south of the USA and the other in Canada.