Wärtsilä closes Zwolle

Wärtsilä is to shut its manufacturing plant at Zwolle, the Netherlands, and shift production of the W26, W28SG and W38 medium-speed engines to the Trieste plant in Italy. The company plans to focus the activities of Wärtsilä Nederland on the service centre at Schiedam. The move affects 700 employees at Zwolle and has been brought about by current market conditions where “the expected demand will be lower than the manufacturing capacity available in the whole group”, according to a Wärtsilä statement. “This situation creates a need for major restructuring and for focusing the resources in fewer operating units,” the statement concludes. In-house manufacturing of medium-speed engines will now be concentrated on the factories in Finland, France and Italy. The Zwolle plant has only recently been upgraded. This was done with the help of a Ä47.2 million loan from the European Investment Bank to the then Stork-Wärtsilä Diesel company, granted in 1996. The plant?s most recent achievement of note was development of the W26 engine, introduced in 1995 (see The Motor Ship, November 1995).