BORG Automotive is one of Europe’s largest, most skilled and most experienced remanufacturing companies in the automotive parts industry. For more than 45 years, te company has worked to deliver the best remanufactured OE-matching automotive parts for the European aftermarket.
BORG Automotive is a Danish company and was originally founded in 1975 under the name of Toft-Jensen Elektro ApS by Søren Toft-Jensen. Today, they sell their products in the four attractive brands DRI, Elstock, Lucas and TMI and offer more than 12, 000 part numbers divided into 9 product groups; one of the widest ranges in the European aftermarket.
BORG Automotive is a workplace for more than 1, 500 ambitious colleagues in Denmark, England, Poland, Belgium and Spain; all working together to make the company a reputable and reliable supplier – now, and in the future.
The company’s goal is to be number one in customer service, and the preferred business partner in the industry.
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
BORG AUTOMOTIVE: We remanufacture and sell automotive parts for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles to distributors, car manufacturers and tier 1 customers throughout most of Europe. As our production sites are placed within Europe we can offer shorter lead times and a high level of security and consistency of supply to our customers. Furthermore, remanufacturing serves a great deal of advantages; first of all, it is beneficial for the environment as remanufacturing is extending the product’s life span by bringing a defective product to the same standard, as it was when it was first manufactured, letting it undergo a process that aim to recover most of the material – without compromising the quality. Studies show that remanufacturing saves 79 percent of the energy used in manufacturing the original product. Secondly, as a remanufacturer, BORG Automotive controls the entire remanufacturing process from parts and production to sales and service. This total control of every process gives BORG an advantage when it comes to quality control and testing. All units are individually tested according to BORG’s high remanufacturing and factory standards and the production has been certified according to ISO standards 9001:2015 and 14001:2015.
E.E: What’s the news for 2021 about new products?
BORG AUTOMOTIVE: In 2020, BORG Automotive acquired the Spanish turbocharger company Turbo Motor Inyeccion S.L., adding remanufacturing of turbochargers to its business portfolio, and in 2021 we started selling turbochargers in our four brands. By adding turbochargers, BORG Automotive has strengthen its position in the aftermarket, with a second product group with the focus on a reduced, cleaner, and optimized emission of exhaust gas. The new product group comprises more than 700 references for passenger cars and light commercial vehicles. For more than 117 million vehicles in Europe, it offers a quality level equal to the new original part.
E.E: What are the ranges of products?
BORG AUTOMOTIVE: BORG Automotive offers nine different product groups; starters, alternators, AC compressors, turbochargers, EGR valves, brake calipers, steering racks, steering pumps and steering columns. We have a wide range in all of our nine product groups, and for starters, alternators, AC compressors, brake calipers and EGR valves we cover more than 90 % of the vehicles on the European roads. We explore new car models in the market to find automotive parts within our nine product groups, which are not part of our product portfolio yet. Afterwards, we research in how to remanufacture these parts. Furthermore, we research in future tendencies in the automotive industry, so that we can optimise our workflow and add new, attractive product groups to our portfolio. This will ensure that we continue to lead the way in the future, by keeping up with industry developments.
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
BORG AUTOMOTIVE: In the last year and half the market has been really dynamic due to the pandemic; on one hand the mobility has significantly dropped for many months due to the measures in place in the different countries; on the other hand the difficulties that the far east supply chain has been experiencing have been an advantage for those companies like us with production / remanufacturing facilities in Europe. Looking at our range, especially in spring and fall 2020, the fact that many vehicles have been parked for several cold days has improved the sales of those product that „suffer” from sitting idle for too long.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
BORG AUTOMOTIVE: Looking at the automotive market, we can observe mainly 3 trends that will impact the car components in the next decades: electrification of powertrain, autonomous driving and car connectivity. These trends will further impact the remanufacturing business in the next years, as the products will be different in terms of components, often embedding electronics. Such trends are therefore definitely increasing the complexity in the products that we are handling; this will never be an argument to decrease our quality, rather, it has pushed us to analyze at 360 degrees how mechatronics product will impact our business and what we need to do to be done in order to handle them as good as we do with the current products. As an example, we have been working to identify the necessary set of skills and equipment needed for the re-engineering process of the next generation products.
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
BORG AUTOMOTIVE: Given the trends above and the requirement of offering a wide coverage of the vehicles in operations, in the last years we’ve been constantly working to introduce the latest development of our product portfolio. Thanks to such work, we’re today capable of offering our customer several references of 12V Belt-driven Starter Generator, Electric AC Compressor, Electric Steering Rack and Electric Parking Brake. To re-engineer some of these products our R&D teams have been facing challenges related to the communication protocols used, like LIN, CAN and FlexRay.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2021?
BORG AUTOMOTIVE: The objective for 2021 is to sustain such development, with more and more references available to market, especially on our most innovative products and the latest acquired Turbochargher. In the meanwhile, our work for identifying potential newer product lines for remanufacturing will be ongoing; hopefully we will have an even wider offer in the next year!
