Influence of the FIAT concern on the shaping of the Polish automobile industry

Abstract

The change of economic system and switching to market economy, as well as opening the economy to international environment, significantly affected the changes in the national industry structure, including the restructuring of the automobile industry. In global economy, international corporations, among them the automobile companies, are carriers of the global economic increase, and the increase in economies of particular countries. On these bases, this paper presents an analysis of the influence of FIAT on the formation of the country’s automobile industry.The country’s automobile industry is, to the greatest extent, connected with the Italian automobile concern FIAT. It has been present in Poland since 1932, when the first licence agreement was signed between the Polish government and FIAT; the agreement included building a car factory in Warsaw. In 1967 the Italian company launched the production of Fiat 125p in the Warsaw FSO factory in Żerań. In 1971, FIAT opened a very modern small-cars factory, FSM, in Bielsko-Biała and Tychy. In 1992, due to its serious situation, it was taken over by FIAT and transformed into three new companies, belonging to the FIAT group, which were: Fiat Auto Poland, Teksid, and Magneti-Marelli. FIAT also took over a number of smaller, chiefly state-owned firms, connected to it by corporational links, which used to be its suppliers. It also took over a number of enterprises which were not connected with automobile industry, e.g. the Bicycle Factory Apollo in Czechowice-Dziedzice, or the factory of lathes in BielskoBiała.FIAT conducted restructuring of its factories (earlier FSM), privatized the supplier firms which were not connected directly with the car production, and sold the metallurgic enterprises in BielskoBiała and Skoczów. These firms were taken over in 1992, by Teksid, which belonged to the FIAT concern. After the foundry in Skoczów was taken over, its production profile was modified and adapted to the needs of the automobile industry.The FIAT concern has strongly influenced the present form of the Polish automobile industry. This is visible in the fact that in the first years of the economic transformation, having taken over FSM factories, it sold the enterprises not connected with car production, and introduced remedial programmes in the remaining firms, thus significantly improving their efficiency and production quality. Restructuring led to production specialization in particular enterprises.In 2005, FIAT employed 8812 workers in Poland. Nowadays the FIAT group is composed of 16 companies and 3 joint-venture enterprises. In the structure of the FIAT group in Poland, the most important is Fiat Auto Poland, specializing in car production, with 3531 employees, i.e. 40.1% of all the group’s workers. Next is Fiat-GM Powertrain Polska, with 1356 employees, which makes 15.4% of the group’s employment. Both these enterprises are dominating in the group and concentrate 55.5% of all its employees.

The FIAT factory in Bielsko-Biała has attracted about 32 foreign cooperating investors to Poland, including Teksid Aluminium, Teksid Iron Poland, Magneti-Marelli, Gestind, Delphi, TRW, and others. As a result of restructuring actions in the Polish automobile industry, currently there are four areas in the country in which automobile enterprises are located: Bielsko-Biała - Gliwice, Warszawa-Łódź, Poznań, and Wrocław.