Extremadura government delegate opens the new manufacturing centre of electronic fuzes at EXPAL facilities in El Gordo (Cáceres).
On 10 July 2013, government delegate Germán López Iglesias inaugurated EXPAL’s new manufacturing facilities of electronic fuzes in ‘El Gordo (Cáceres)’.
Germán López was welcomed to the site by EXPAL general manager Manuel García-Sañudo and El Gordo plant manager Ruben Montenegro. He was accompanied by Badajoz government sub-delegate Pilar Nogales Perogil, Extremadura Industry and Energy Department director Pedro Protomártir and El Gordo mayor Elias Bravo Correas.
The new building contains 917m2, with an investment of around €1m in its development.During each shift the building will contain 62 employees.
EXPAL has been manufacturing fuzes for more than 20 years. The fuze controls the functioning and concentrates the security features of the ammunition. The next-generation electronic fuzes that will be manufactured in this new centre represent a true technological leap in the reliability and accuracy of these products. They include new security and self-destruction mechanisms, which prevent collateral damage in operations.
This new centre completes and enhances EXPAL´s capabilities within this industry, and places it as one of the world leaders in these systems.
All processes, equipment and workflows are designed based on the ‘Lean Manufacturing’ criteria, which manages the entire value chain to allow greater flexibility to adapt to demand and increase efficiency. These improved processes facilitate EXPAL to export more than 90% of all its production, and enable the company to maintain its position against its competitors.
During the visit of the facility, participants learnt about the plant’s other activites and projects being carried out.
EXPAL facilities in El Gordo also carry out programmes of demilitarisation and recovery and recycling of obsolete ammunition, both for the Spanish armed forces and for other countries. The new site marks the centre of EXPAL’s knowledge and skill related todemilitarisation activities. All of the company’s demilitarisation programmes are managed in El Gordo, from the design and equipment processes, which are then sent to all EXPAL production centres in Italy, Denmark and Bulgaria, as well as to other military facilities or customer operations centres where EXPAL performs the Demil programmes.
EXPAL’s demilitarisation programmes have expanded into Brazil and Europe, where it is establishing a demilitarisation line for the Brazilian navy and, under a development assistance programme with the EU in Belarus, research is currently being performed on the destruction of the arsenal of anti-person mines.
The company offers clients proposals related to demilitarisation activities, and recently aided the withdrawal of international forces in Afghanistan.