The cooperative Fagor Ederlan has received support from FIEX and from COFIDES own resources to set up a production plant in San Luis de Potosí (Mexico), one of the country's automotive hubs. In this plant, Fagor Ederlan will manufacture aluminium suspension knuckles, a security component for vehicle suspensions, an activity that they already carry out in other plants in regions such as Europe and China.

This is the third operation in which COFIDES and Fagor Ederlan have collaborated, after supporting the company to set up in China in 2011. The project responds to Fagor Ederlan's strategy as a global supplier of automotive components, which leads it to accompany and provide service to customers based in North America.

A global supplier, Fagor Ederlan has 18 production plants in Spain, Slovakia, Brazil, China and Mexico, which allows it to guarantee an optimal response to the automotive market's supply needs. In addition, it has eight commercial subsidiaries (Europe, USA, China, Korea and Japan) and a technological centre, Edertek, in the Basque Country where the cooperative focuses on innovation through developing research activities, designing and developing new products, processes and materials.

Fagor Ederlan is an industrial cooperative founded in 1963. Part of Corporación Mondragón, its scope of business is part of the industrial area, specifically in the group's Automotive Division. It focuses on designing, manufacturing and supplying automotive components for Chassis and Powertrain. As a technology leader, Fagor Ederlan is a benchmark supplier in technological processes of iron gravity casting, high and low pressure aluminium, tooling and assembly.

Innovation at Fagor Ederlan

Fagor Ederlan has a technological centre, Edertek, in the Basque Country where it carries out research activities, designing and developing new products, processes and materials under the prism of innovation.

The technological centre is the first Garaia Innovation Hub, a space of excellence that puts companies and research centres in contact, and that fosters the interrelation with other entities and technological agents, such as Mondragón Unibertsitatea, Ikerlan and Tecnalia, which Edertek has signed collaboration agreements with.

At Edertek, Research and Development hub, 55 people work with over 350 engineers spread across the different Fagor Ederlan Taldea plants. It has two buildings, one which is 1,500 square metres for R&D&I Advanced Engineering, and another one which is 1,000 square metres, called the Advanced Manufacturing Module (IMA) for the physical realization of prototypes in different technologies, as well as activities for transferring developments to the industrial field. In addition, Edertek has spaces, both specific and shared, on the Mondragon University campus where the area dedicated to carrying out functional tests for the verification of the developed products is located.

Its European centre of Advanced Engineering works to offer the best solution in terms of product performance, weight reduction and cost.

The innovation activities are carried out with state-of-the-art equipment, to guarantee the direct transfer of the developments to the industrial phase. It has a new cuttingedge laboratory, gravity and low pressure installations and high pressure facilities that are part of the resources for the reproduction of an environment similar to mass production.

In addition, it has a research programme that offers robust designs of lighter and technologically advanced components, based on the continuous development of new and different materials as well as innovative applications of its processes.