The Dürr Group has received a major order from the BMW Group for its U.S. plant in Spartanburg, SC, worth more than €100 million. As reported previously, BMW’s production capacity at the plant will be increased from 160,000 to 240,000 units by 2012. The required expansion of the paint shop will be realized largely by Dürr.

The Dürr Group has received a major order from the BMW Group for its U.S. plant in Spartanburg, SC, worth more than €100 million. As reported previously, BMW’s production capacity at the plant will be increased from 160,000 to 240,000 units by 2012. The required expansion of the paint shop will be realized largely by Dürr.

The paint shop, built by Dürr in 1996, will be expanded so that the X3’s successor model and the X6 can be produced there in the future in addition to the BMW X5. The paint shop will be expanded by 28,000 m3, or 80%. Dürr will build three new areas for this paint shop: 1) a basecoating facility with pretreatment, dip-coating and drying, where the RoDip rotation dipping process will be used; 2) a primer line and a topcoat line with connected finishing and waxing lines for post-treatment and transport sealing; and 3) a sealing line for weld seams and underbody protection.

While production is supposed to begin in the first two areas in mid-2009, the sealing line’s startup is planned for mid-2010. Capacity is to increase from 27 units per hour now to 46 as a result of expanding the paint shop.

For more information, visit www.durr.com or www.bmwgroup.com.