Lenovo Opens Its First Factory in Europe

In the IT business, we know quite a bit about viruses, however, when the Covid-19 pandemic flooded the world, and especially China, we were hit harder than ever before. The way in which China handled the pandemic and the spread throughout the country caused deliveries to come to a halt. One is tempted to say that the delivery nerves were infected with a virus as well. However, Søren Koed explains that when things such as the Covid-19 shut-down happen, Lenovo is able to move production around between its factories. “This is where the advantage to manufacturing locally becomes obvious,” he says.

The new plant in Hungary can manufacture more than 1,000 servers and 4,000 workstations a day which clearly would make a big difference in the European market. Naturally, a plant like this of more than 50,000 square meters was not created to accommodate a global pandemic. “The factory was in the works long before Covid-19 hit and has the long-term goal focused on sustainability, but also scalability when it comes to operations and costs,” Søren Koed explains.

At Danoffice IT, it is crucial to us that solutions, deliveries, and partnerships are responsible and considerate of the world in general as well as the climate. Rasmus also sees a connection to that in all of this: "The green perspective has an independent role. Clearly, the products themselves are becoming greener when they do not need to be manufactured and then shipped from the East and in that, we can offer our customers a substantially greener solution. This will particularly be critical for those of our customers who already have a pronounced green profile," he says and continues: "In addition to that, this matches well with our work on Social Impact and responsibility since this creates jobs in the EU overall as well as very local jobs which has a great deal of positive impact".

The circular mindset revolving around the lifespan of IT equipment is becoming more and more present in the industry on a global scale and it has also been central to the creation of Lenovo’s plant in Hungary, Søren explains. 

Everyone knows that Lenovo is no minor league player. Boasting 35+ factories all over the world allows this manufacturer to throw its weight around when it comes to supply chain in a way most cannot compete with. “Currently, Gartner has us ranked number 9 in their Supply Chain Top 25 list for 2022. This only goes to show that it is one of our core skills,” Søren Koed says. “It is also the reason why we now manufacture for the largest Cloud Providers in the world. In fact, we deliver to eight of the ten largest providers. They all have very strict requirements for both components, quality, and the deliveries themselves. Clearly, this provides some volume to our production, but it benefits everyone. The more our factories put out, the better the pricing will be. As such, the factory in Hungary will contribute to us meeting our goal of sustainability while also optimizing our supply chains and economy,” Søren Koed concludes.

Green Customers Requirements

Danoffice IT’s Global Sales does business with global actors in green energy and in this area, the plant in Hungary has already played a role. The shorter delivery times and distances to travel are key for this type of customer. However, for companies that are already completely green or who deal in green energy, transport times are not enough.