Germany-based ZF Friedrichshafen AG, a manufacturer of automotive components, officially opened a new purpose-built technical and office facility at Blythe Valley Business Park in Shirley, Solihull last week. This new £70 million, 220,000ft², ‘state of the art’ technical centre houses 700 staff with room for growth, and is located in the heart of the UK’s automotive industry and central to all of the UK test bed facilities.

The site features the latest technology and infrastructure for developing advanced solutions for an autonomous, electric and connected mobility future. The facility design and architecture underpins the groups sustainability strategy for across-the-board carbon neutrality by 2040.

Andy Street, the Mayor of the West Midlands officially opened the facility during a ribbon-cutting ceremony, which was also attended by representatives from the UK’s top engineering universities, senior representatives of UK Government departments and associated strategists for next-generation mobility. Other guests included Dilbagh Singh and Asha Kharga from the Mahindra Group.

Peter Lakie, ZF senior vice-president and key account executive, said: “I am very proud of the teams here: those that had the vision and those who worked to bring that vision to life. The passion of these people, with the support of all the staff has created a sustainable environment that promotes collaboration and agile working practices.”

The facility is a multi-disciplinary, multi-divisional location, collaborating on the development of key technologies and system solutions for active and passive safety systems: autonomous driving; cyber security; electronics; braking and steering systems; electrified powertrain solutions; and race engineering.

Autonomous driving and electromobility
The location is also designated as ZF’s global Centre of Competency for servo motors design. In these future-oriented areas, ZF is increasing the number of R&D specialists at the Shirley facility. These technologies are all contributing to solutions which use high levels of autonomous driving and electromobility.

Alastair McQueen, site lead at Shirley, said: “In the design of this new facility, we made a specific effort to ensure that we created a future-proofed working environment which was going to encourage collaboration and agile working practices — one that would enable and accelerate the development of new technologies in support of ZF’s next-generation mobility goals,”

The new site also enables greater customer collaboration — from project support to launch support. As an example, ZF supplies Mahindra Racing with the e-powertrain and dampers for its Formula E Racecar and was delighted to host the launch of the team’s Series 8 Formla E Racecar later the same day.

ZF has a number of businesses at other locations in the UK, all contributing to the company’s focus on creating technologies for vehicles and equipment which can see, think and act.