Duerr Wins $150 Million Contract From Hyundai

STUTTGART - December 18, 2002; Dow Jones reported that German supplier of manufacturing systems and manufacturing support services for the automotive industry Duerr AG said Wednesday it won a contract worth around $150 million from Korean automobile manufacturer Hyundai for the delivery of a complete paint shop.

The new turnkey paint shop that is going to be installed at Montgomery in the U.S. state of Alabama will have the capacity to paint different models at a total production rate of up to 300,000 bodies per year. Start of production will be in the summer of 2004, full-capacity production is scheduled to begin in January 2005.

The scope of supply includes modern process and conveyor systems, the paint supply system, spray booths and ovens, including air purification, integrated software solutions for the control and supervisory control system plus production and plant monitoring system as well as the building. Environmentally sustainable water-borne paints are used in the innovative RoDip rotation dip pretreatment and electrocoating system and in base coat application.

Paint Systems, the largest Duerr business unit, was able to report strong growth in the first nine months of fiscal 2002, with incoming orders totaling EUR985.0 million compared to the comparable period of the previous year ( EUR673.8 million). Against the backdrop of a largely stable situation in large- volume projects, the management board is expecting incoming orders and orders on hand for the Group as a whole in the entire year 2002 to be above the previous year's level.