The company plans to cooperate with Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) in training the required specialists in the area of mechatronics, electronic engineering and applications systems. In addition, it expects to cooperate with KTU in the field of scientific research and contribute to the research work of postgraduate students.
“We chose Kaunas due to the rapidly growing automotive component manufacturing cluster. Seeing its development and how Kaunas municipality and the city’s universities are interested in the cluster, we believe that this location will become one of the centres for the future automotive industry and we want to be here as early as possible,” Dr. Frank Sager, AL-KO’s senior vice president for research and development, said.
According to Mantas Katinas, director general of Invest Lithuania, our country is becoming an attractive location not only for automotive component manufacturing but also for research and product development.
By the end of 2015 AL-KO and Dexter Axle – a trailer axle and brake supplier from the US – were united under the roof of the new company DexKo Global Inc. with a turnover of over USD 1 billion. It has become the world’s largest axle and chassis component manufacturer in this segment and it is planned to grow further.
At present, the DexKo Global has around 4,200 employees in 45 countries worldwide. AL-KO Vehicle Technology is represented on all continents of the globe – with a total of 2400 employees and over 40 production locations, sales companies and around 1,000 service stations.
