Renault Seville Powertrain Plant Reaches 20M Milestone

French manufacturer Renault announced today it is celebrating a new manufacturing milestone at its Seville plant in Spain, where the 20 millionth gearbox rolled off the production lines. The Seville powertrain plant was founded in 1965 and is ISO 14001 certified.

According to Renault, the plant produced 755 370 gearboxes in 2009, covering one third of the Renault Group’s needs, with approximately 10% of these gearboxes being made for Nissan.

The manufacturer, however, has various other powertrain plants, including in France (Cléon, Choisy and Ruitz), Portugal (the CACIA plant, near Aveiro), Romania (Pitesti), Turkey (Bursa) and Chile (the CORMECANICA plant in Los Andes).

The environmentally-friendly site employs 1 063 workers, who produce a range of gearboxes that are listed below:

• JB and JH (manual 5-speed, maximum torque of 160 Nm, fitted on Renault Twingo, Clio, Symbol, Mégane, Scénic, Fluence, Kangoo, Dacia Logan, Logan Van et Sandero, ainsi que sur Nissan Micra).
• TL4 (manual 6-speed, maximum torque of 240 Nm, fitted on Renault Clio, Symbol, Modus, Mégane, Scénic, Kangoo, and Nissan Micra, Note, Tiida and Qashqai).

The 20 millionth unit was a JH3 manual 5-speed that will be shipped to the Nissan plant in Samut Prakan, near Bangkok, Thailand, and fitted on a Nissan Micra.

The new Micra which, according to Nissan, is currently being marketed in 160 countries, retains its compact dimensions, but is a bit longer and lower than the previous generation. The longer wheelbase allowed Nissan to gain interior space, by placing the wheels at each corner of the vehicle.