Valtra announces plans to upgrade paint shop

Planning is under way for a new paint shop facility at the Valtra factory in Suolahti, Finland.

The firm said that the ongoing paint shop project is the largest investment made at the factory in decades and will allow the company to become more flexible and sustainable than before.

The new paint shop will be located in a 1,500sq m building extension right next to the assembly factory.

Managing director Jari Rautjärv claims that the investment will allow the factory to operate a lot more flexibly, accommodate larger machines and allow for an increase in production capacity.

"We’re building a fully new, automatised paint shop which will complement our current requirements for volume and accommodate the increased frames of the tractors.

"The coating process entails the automatised wash and pre-treatment, the robotic painting itself, and finally drying. In the new painting process, a base and surface coat of the grey paint is sprayed in a separate painting chamber.

"The functional properties of the coating are improved by the vaporisation carried out in between coats of paint,” says project manager Mikko Torvelainen.

Valtra has said that production at the Suolahti factory will continue as normal during the construction phase.

Foundations will be laid in summer 2021, with the new paint shop due to start operating in August 2022.

Over the past few years, AGCO has been making substantial investments at its Suolahti factory.

January this year marked the start of operations for a brand new 9,000sq m(100,000m3) logistics centre.

This project involved substantial alterations to the assembly plant layout which in turn enables the manufacture of a new series in the future, according to the firm.