LITHUANIA - Ikea Industry has decided to invest in advanced technology for furniture production in order to double the capacity in its Kazlų Rūda, Lithuania site.

The construction of a new factory is scheduled to begin this autumn and planned to be completed in the summer of 2019. In 2016, the Kazlų Rūda manufacturing complex produced 1.2 million pieces of furniture and 545 thousand cubic meters of particle board.

“The investments will not only increase the volume of furniture production, but also improve it. The new equipment will be more efficient and help us to manufacture faster and allow more efficient use of raw materials, which will reduce costs and waste generation. Additionally, the level of automation will be much higher, and an advanced automatic quality control system will increase the quality for our customers”, says Karolis Jonaitis, Manager of Ikea Industry Lithuania furniture factory.

Some of the most important changes are related to the working conditions in the factory. Improvement areas cover ergonomics of workplaces and changing work schedules from 7 to 5 business days a week. “Ikea Industry’s new-generation factory is an example of how new technology and automated systems, with only a few handful additional co-workers, can double the production capacities, which is changing the attitude of production in Lithuania”, says Mantas Katinas, Managing Director of the foreign investment promotion agency Invest Lithuania.

Ikea Industry, operating in Lithuania since 2008, is the world’s largest producer of wooden furniture. As an integrated part of the Ikea value chain, Ikea Industry has 41 production units in 10 countries with about 19,000 workers. Every year Ikea Industry factories produce more than 100 million units of furniture.