New state-of-the-art paint shop at Valtra factory
29 January 2021
The Valtra factory in Suolahti, Finland is going to become more flexible and sustainable than ever before with the addition of a new state-of-the-art paint shop. Detailed plans are currently in development and the new paint shop will start operations in 2022.
Thanks to the new paint shop, the whole factory will operate that much more flexibly, with an increased production capacity as well
”The new paint shop is the biggest investment made at the Valtra Suolahti factor in decades. Demand for high-quality Valtra tractors is on the rise, and the new paint shop will help us fulfil promises to our customers even better. Thanks to the new paint shop, the whole factory will operate that much more flexibly, with an increased production capacity as well,” says Managing Director Jari Rautjärvi.
The new paint shop will be located in a 1,500 square metre building extension, to be constructed next to the assembly factory.
We’re building a fully new, automatised paint shop which will complement our current requirements for volume and accommodate the increased frames of the tractors.
”We’re building a fully new, automatised paint shop which will complement our current requirements for volume and accommodate the increased frames of the tractors. The new paint shop will allow us to make use of tried and tested technologies. For example, we have used robotised painting for decades and we were world first to use a virtual 3D environment for programming painting robots. The coating process entails the automatised wash and pretreatment, the robotic painting itself, and finally drying. In the new painting process, a base and surface coat of the grey paint is sprayed in a separate painting chamber. The functional properties of the coating are improved by the vaporisation carried out in between coats of paint,” says Mikko Torvelainen who is in charge of the project.
The new paint shop will not only make the Suolahti factory more flexible and enable the manufacture of larger machines – and more machines – than before. The paint shop will further improve the factory’s energy efficiency and safety, including fire safety.
Production at the Suolahti factory will continue as normal during the construction phase. Foundations will be laid in summer 2021, with the new paint shop due to start operating in August 2022.
AGCO has been making heavy investments in the Suolahti site over the last few years. In January 2021, a brand-new 9,000 square metre (approx. 100,000 cubic metre) logistics centre began operations. This involved extensive alterations to the layout of the assembly plant, enabling the efficient manufacture of new model series in the future.
