Skip to main content

Kapsch to close Chinese factory and move work back to Vienna

Kapsch is to close its Chinese factory and produce its railway radio modules in its Vienna plant, which will be expanded. Although it will be five per cent more expensive to produce the products in Austria than China, wages are increasing in China and if the yuan is revalued the Chinese factory will no longer be able to compete with Austria. In addition, producing the parts in Vienna will mean that the company is able to react to client demands faster; a container takes up to six weeks to get from China to
March 23, 2012 Read time: 1 min
81 Kapsch is to close its Chinese factory and produce its railway radio modules in its Vienna plant, which will be expanded. Although it will be five per cent more expensive to produce the products in Austria than China, wages are increasing in China and if the yuan is revalued the Chinese factory will no longer be able to compete with Austria. In addition, producing the parts in Vienna will mean that the company is able to react to client demands faster; a container takes up to six weeks to get from China to Austria.

The return is part of a wider trend; almost half of German companies which had moved production abroad have already brought it back, according to the Fraunhofer Institut für System- und Innovationsforschung.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Kapsch TrafficCom increases turnover
    July 19, 2012
    Kapsch TrafficCom recorded a turnover increase from €388.66 million (US$476.75 million) in the 2010/2011 business year to €549.9 million in the 2011/2012 business year. Net profits decreased three per cent to €27.5 million and Ebit decreased 13.6 per cent to €42.2 million.
  • Efkon highlights portable and mobile enforcement solutions in Vienna
    October 23, 2012
    Fundamental to efficient toll systems and traffic management solutions is enforcement, a core competency of Efkon and which it is highlighting at this ITS World Congress. The company says its range of stationary, portable and mobile enforcement solutions is based on five major modules: reliable vehicle detection, flexible and high performance vehicle classification, car to infrastructure communication (all DSRC variants), court proof evidence based on high quality imaging, and automatic assessment. Efkon's
  • Report urges US$25 billion transport improvement plan
    August 6, 2014
    The One North report, produced by the city regions of Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield in the UK, puts forward a strategic proposition for transport in the north of the country. The US$16.8-US$25.2 billion plan urges major changes in connectivity and capacity between the northern cities over the next 15 years and proposes optimisation of strategic highway capacity, a new high speed trans-Pennine rail route and improved city region rail networks interconnected with HS2 services, new inte
  • Healthy prospects for floating vehicle data systems
    February 3, 2012
    Elmar Brockfeld, Alexander Sohr and Peter Wagner from the German Aerospace Center's Institute of Transport Systems look at the prospects for floating vehicle data systems. Although Floating Vehicle Data (FVD) or probe vehicle fleets have been around for about a decade, the idea behind them is of course much older: from probe vehicles that flow with the traffic it should be possible to get a precise, fast and spatially near-complete picture of the prevailing traffic flow conditions in an area under surveilla