GONVVAMA's innovative solutions to make auto parts stronger, lighter

China Daily | Updated: 2019-04-26 08:37

GONVVAMA is a joint venture between Valin ArcelorMittal Automotive Steel (VAMA) and Gonvarri, the Spanish world-leading steel service company. As an extended facility of VAMA, GONVVAMA operates the latest manufacturing technologies to produce shape blanks and laser welded blanks in both cold and hot-stamping products, including third generation of ultra-high strength steels and second generation press hardened steel - Usibor 2000 and Ductibor 1000, and exposed panels. GONVVAMA is committed to offering high-quality products, integrated technology and solutions to car manufacturers. Recently GONVVAMA's CEO Jean-Marc Butin sat down with China Daily to share his views on the company's future in China.

What sets GONVVAMA apart from its competitors in China?

GONVVAMA's innovative solutions to make auto parts stronger, lighter

First of all, GONVVAMA has a strong management team with an international background. And each site of GONVVAMA is supported by a team at the start of production.

Second, GONVVAMA enjoys technology transfer and support from ArcelorMittal and Gonvarri, including global synchronization of new grades and processes of door ring, unique know-how in blanking and laser welding, partial ablation technology and exclusivity.

Third, the state-of-the-art equipment at GONVVAMA's team is available to propose solutions.

The latest equipment includes blanking press, unique ablation technology, breakthrough continuous laser welding and complex door ring welding lines.

In addition, the Early Vendor Involvement team specialized in optimized laser-welded blank, or LWB, will propose a package of solutions including material savings and processing efficiency.

GONVVAMA is offering customers a full range of steel services and solutions. How has GONVVAMA developed in China so far?

GONVVAMA set up four Advanced Technologies and Solutions Centers in Changshu in Jiangsu province, Chongqing, Shenyang in Liaoning province and Loudi in Hunan province from 2016 to 2018, to bring the most advanced lightweight LWB steel solutions to the doorsteps of carmakers in China. It shipped 12 million blanks in 2018 and will ship over 30 million blanks in 2019, including complex parts like laser-welded door rings.

A large number of parts are designed and frozen at almost all Chinese Original Equipment Manufacturers. Parts such as laser-welded front rails and rear rails, A and B pillars, tunnels and side-cross members, will be produced in all our plants soon.

In 2017, GONVVAMA plants in Changshu, Shenyang and Chongqing were put into operation. In October 2018, the second phase of the GONVVAMA plant in Loudi went into operation, a big step toward the goal to "be at the forefront of automotive in China by making vehicles safer, lighter, and greener".

What do you consider as your priorities for this year's working plan and what will GONVVAMA do to understand China's market and Chinese consumers?

GONVVAMA will continue to codevelop solutions with LWBs made from ultrahigh strength steel and hot stamping steel, based on ArcelorMittal's S-in motion light weighting and safety solutions to meet new C-NCAP and environmental norms and bring ArcelorMittal's award-winning LWB door ring solutions to all the global and Chinese OEMs. More recently, ArcelorMittal has developed S-in motion approach based on BEV SUV. We are going to propose these breakthrough solutions to all OEMs in the coming weeks.