ABB has won a contract from the Ford Motor Company’s Premier Automotive Group for the supply of six-axis robots for a new manufacturing project at the Halewood plant.
ABB will supply more than 200 of the powerful new IRB 6600 and its heavyweight counterpart the IRB 7600, to support the build of the Next Generation Land Rover Freelander, which goes into production at the Halewood plant in 2006.
The new Freelander programme marks a departure for Land Rover from its traditional home at Solihull, West Midlands, to the Halewood, Merseyside, plant, which is probably best known as the manufacturing centre for the Jaguar X-TYPE.
Some 226 new robots are to be supplied, which complement a further 24 refurbished IRB 6000 robots relocated from the Solihull plant. All the robots will be used for spot welding and mechanical handling applications. ABB will also provide pre-engineering support on the project.
IRB 6400R and IRB 7600 robots supplied by ABB also support production of the Land Rover Discovery 3 and Range Rover Sport at the Solihull manufacturing facility.