Closure of one of the last computer factories in Europe has been averted by takeover

Kontron is to acquire Fujitsu’s Augsburg-based motherboard factory. Fujitsu wanted to close the location completely. Kontron will manufacture motherboards for industrial applications and robots. It is one of the last computer factories in Europe.

Kontron is owned by the Austrian S&T AG, which in turn is about 30 percent owned by the giant electronics manufacturer Foxconn. Heise writes that. The announcement of the closure of the Augsburg factory revealed that 1,500 jobs would disappear, but it is unknown how many jobs will be retained with the takeover of the factory by Kontron.

Fujitsu motivated the 2018 decision to close the factory on the grounds that it wants to centralize its operations in its home country of Japan. In addition, the move was also the result of a shift from products to services for Fujitsu. The company wants to focus more on specific technology such as artificial intelligence and the blockchain, it said at the time. The Augsburg plant was Fujitsu’s only manufacturing facility in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region.

Another computer factory in Europe is Dell’s, in Łódź, Poland, where it makes servers and desktops. Dell started using that factory in 2008, but wanted to sell it to Foxconn a year later. That sale fell through in 2011. Another Dell factory is in Limerick, Ireland.