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 THE THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE AUTOMOTIVE
CLUSTER OF SLOVENIA AND THE INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS CONFERENCE
On 24 May 2005, the Automotive Cluster of Slovenia organized its
third annual convention the title of which was "Developmental movements
in automotive supply industry". The representatives from automotive
industry, Magna International Europe AG, Volkswagen Group, BMW Group,
domestic suppliers Hidria Automotive, CIMOS d.d. and the European
and Scandinavian associations of automotive suppliers and others joined
the discussion on global and regional movements for vehicle producers
and suppliers as well as the ways to raise the competitiveness of
automotive suppliers and to use market opportunities.In spite of big changes in structure and new fast growing markets and production in Asia (China, India) and Eastern Europe, automotive industry will remain one of the most important sectors of economy in Europe. Some strategists explain that the reason for this are strong research and development centres that were established here in the past and are still being established now; partly they receive investments from non-Europeans, too. The other reason is that the leading producers in Europe have managed to maintain highly innovative production of premium class cars which keeps connections with many innovative suppliers. If economic conditions for industry in EU do not change to worse in the following years, the automotive industry should, according to strategists' estimates, operate successfully during the next ten years. In the afternoon, the convention was followed by the ACS business conference which was organized as one-on-one meetings among the representatives of vehicle producers and system suppliers, car components producers and car components suppliers, development, production and other services providers and producers of tools and machines for automotive industry. Both the convention and the business conference were international; there were about 170 participants from Slovenia Austria, Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sweden and Norway. There were many participants from clusters and supply networks, especially from Austria and Germany that have been co-operating with ACS for many years. The convention offered a lot of topical knowledge about trends and new opportunities for automotive suppliers in developmental movements of automotive and automotive supply industry in Europe and in the world. In addition to this there was a possibility for exchanging experience in innovations of complex products and advanced technologies in automotive industry. The business conference, however, offered opportunities to form new connections for developmental partnerships and for more cooperation between industrial, development and research as well as service companies. The importance of automotive industry in Slovenia can best be presented by the data which shows that vehicles, automotive components and tools and machines for automotive and automotive supply industry, together present 18.4% share in Slovenian export of goods. If we consider the overall export of goods and services the share is 15%. This industry employs about 22000 employees. Many of them are employed indirectly, in developmental, logistical and other services. The above description does not include the commercial activities connected to turnover with cars, nor does it include after-sale maintenance services. According to the available data about exports in 2004 we can draw conclusions that the value of vehicle export (mainly personal cars) in comparison with 2003 really raised by 9% and that the export of automotive components in the most frequent groups of activities (car parts production, car electricity, electric motors, seat covers, etc.) increased even to 27%. The vehicles were purchased mainly by buyers from France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Spain, and Croatia. The automotive components were mainly purchased by buyers from Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Mexico, Great Britain, Spain, Romania, USA, etc. Since the overall export of goods from Slovenia in 2004 increased by 9.7% (to 12.54 billion EUR) the export of automotive components increased its share in the export even more and therefore strengthened its importance in the Slovenian economic structure. Members of ACS - the Automotive Cluster of Slovenia make 950 million Euros with production of vehicles and automotive components; 800 million they make on foreign markets. Since cluster members besides automotive programs produce other products as well, 16,500 employees make more than 2 billion Euros of income, 71% of which - on foreign markets and therefore achieve 26,350 Euros of added value per an employee (in 2003), which is above the average added value in the processing activity. In addition to 47 industrial companies which create the above mentioned realization, ACS includes as its members (altogether 54 members) five faculties and two independent institutes with about 2000 employees, at least a half of which are researchers. << Back |