Lindbäcks – the market leader for the manufacture of apartments in Sweden – has chosen Weinmann to supply a new production line for wall manufacturing. The 10 million Euro investment is part of some entirely new machinery for the new, state-of-the-art production plant built in Piteå.

“Now we look forward to going into the next phase and starting to project and build a world class wall manufacturing line together”, says Ola Magnusson, project manager of the Lindbäcks’ new production facility.

The deal was made with the Swedish retailer Thomas Frick AB, who represents Weinmann in Sweden. Together with Lindbäcks, Weinmann and Frick developed the layout and technical specifications for the production process.

“It has been exciting, fun and rewarding to work with the Lindbäcks team to develop a highly automated production plant for such a large-scale project with such high standards as Lindbäcks predicts for the future. The distinctive feature of the project is the good interaction of our respective technologies, and the new factory will be unprecedented, the most modern one in Europe”, says Johan Frick, CEO of Thomas Frick AB.

One module usually comprises four walls, which means that Lindbäcks has to get out a finished wall every seven minutes, which corresponds to a production capacity of more than one meter of wall per minute. “We are therefore approaching the current production rate in the automotive industry. It has been a great challenge to develop this line under such tough conditions”, emphasizes Ola Magnusson. “In 2019, we will start the production of a novel exterior wall type that will meet future energy standards and enable us to build higher buildings. The production line is designed for this purpose.”

Europe's most modern manufacturing plant for apartment buildings:

• Area: 40,000 square meters, including production, inventory, office, restaurant, staff facilities, etc.
• Capacity: 1,600 flats / year which, together with the existing manufacturing plant in Öjebyn, offers a production capacity of 2,400 flats / year
• Jobs: 150 excl. construction sites, subcontractors and suppliers.
• Recruitments as of January 2016: 103 people, of whom about 24% are women (target is a percentage of 50%).
• Durability: the whole factory is supplied with district heating from the neighbor SunPine AB and solar energy on the factory roof.
• Opening: December 19, 2017
• In operation: From January 2018