Seat
Seat today is the only major Spanish car manufacturer with the ability and the infrastructure to develop its own cars in-house.Its headquarters and main manufacturing facilities are located in Martorell, an industrial town located some 30 kilometres northwest of Barcelona,with a production capacity of around 500,000 units per annum. The plant was opened by King Juan Carlos of Spain on February 22, 1993, and replaced Seat's former assembly plant by the coast in Barcelona's freeport zone (Zona Franca). A rail connection between Seat's Martorell and Zona Franca complexes facilitates vehicle and parts transportation between the two sites.
The industrial complex in Martorell also hosts the facilities of Seat Sport, Seat's Technical Center, Research and Development Center (R&D), Design Center,Prototypes Centre of Development, Service Center (also incorporating the After-Sales Service division, the Customer Services division and the Catalunya Motor dealership),as well as the Genuine Parts Centre for SEAT, Volkswagen, Audi and Škoda brands.
The development and assembly facilities are some of the newest and most modern and efficient within the Volkswagen Group, giving the Martorell site the ability to produce high-quality cars[20] not only for its own brand but also for other Volkswagen Group brands, such as Volkswagen and Audi.For example, the development and design of several Audi models (e.g. the Audi A1,the Audi A3 Sportback,the Audi Q5 etc.) and also several Audi development projects took place there,and from 2011 onwards the Martorell plant will manufacture the Audi Q3 small SUV.
The Barcelona Zona Franca site includes the Seat Training Centre, the Zona Franca Press Shop factory, producing stamped body parts, and the Barcelona Gearbox del Prat plant, producing gearboxes not only for
Seat but also for other Volkswagen Group marques (VW, Audi and Škoda);the latter plant was awarded the Volkswagen Excellence Award in 2009 by the Volkswagen Group for high-quality production process and product.Another plant owned directly by Seat from 1975 was the Landaben plant in Pamplona, but on December 1993 its ownership was transferred to the Volkswagen Group subsidiary "Volkswagen-Audi-Espana, S.A.", and the site today is producing Volkswagen cars in Spain.However, Martorell site still provides support to Volkswagen's operations in the Pamplona plant when necessary, as it did after a serious fire in the paint shop in the Landaben VW plant in April 2007.
Factories of the Volkswagen Group currently producing
Seat models also include the Palmela AutoEuropa site in Portugal,[4] while in the past other plants were involved too in producing
Seat models, such as the factories in Germany (Wolfsburg), Belgium (Brussels) and Slovakia (Bratislava).Future plans include a new Research and development (R&D) centre in the city of Barcelona in the field of environmental and energy efficiency for the entire Volkswagen Group and also the launch of a project on the city's urban mobility,[33] as well as a
Seat museum in the Zona Franca's 'Nave A122' site hosting all production and prototype models ever presented together with some special or limited edition vehicles with historical value for the brand and the automotive history of Spain.Among Seat's subsidiaries, the Deutschland GmbH subsidiary company is based in Mörfelden-Walldorf, Germany, and apart from its commercial activities has the further responsibility of operating Seat's electronic platform, the IT Services Network. In Wolfsburg, Germany, in the middle of a lake inside the Autostadt, the Volkswagen Group's corporate theme park, is Seat's thematic pavilion, one of the largest pavilions in the park.
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