The history of the Spanish automotive multinational Antolin began revolving around a rubber-filled ball joint and now it does so around the planet.
Founded in the fifties, the company has humble origins. At just fourteen years old, José Antolín began working with his brother Avelino in his father's mechanical workshop in Burgos, where they both invented a rubber and metal steering ball joint that caught the attention of car manufacturers who at that time began to settle in Spain. This is how they gained the trust of the brands and began to receive orders.
One generation and an ambitious internationalization process later, Antolin is now an automotive multinational dedicated to equipping the interior of vehicles. It has more than 130 plants spread around the world and annual revenues close to 4.5 billion euros. VW, Ford, Renault, Stellantis, Daimler and many other manufacturers buy their roofs, doors, lighting devices, consoles and electronic systems for cars.
“Leading companies like us have to always be reinventing ourselves to keep up with the pace of the industry and our customers. We are nonconformists and ambitious, two qualities that have led us, in seventy years of history, to be a world leader,” says the company's president, Ernesto Antolín.
The transition from the workshop to the multinational has not been without difficulties, some recent and unrelated to the sector. The Covid stoppage – the firm has factories in Wuhan, the epicenter of the pandemic –, the chip supply crisis and the war in Ukraine – there were also plants in Russia – forced it to focus on what was urgent and prevented it from dedicating all its efforts to The important thing is the great technological transition in the automotive industry. Last year the company had to assume the negative impact of the sale of the business in Russia in its accounts.
However, the fog begins to dissipate and it is time to return to the future of the automotive industry, which is now the present. The company is immersed in “a transformation plan that seeks to give a strong boost to our strategy,” says its president.
“We are going to focus more on the customer, being their key partner for their future vehicles. We will accelerate our technologies and innovative solutions and, above all, we will grow profitably and sustainably by focusing on markets with high growth potential, such as China or India,” says Antolín.
In these two countries, the company's business share is lower than what it has achieved in the European markets. For this reason, the group has bet heavily on the Shanghai Motor Show and has just inaugurated a new global design and business office in Pune, India. Antolin already has five factories in the country and also supplies large local car manufacturers, including Tata and Mahindra.
The transformation plan that the company has just presented also includes figures and forecasts. The objective of the new roadmap is to increase sales at an annual rate of between 7% and 8% until 2026 to achieve revenues of nearly 6,000 million euros that year. It will also invest 1,200 million euros throughout the period and aims to more than double the gross operating profit (EBITDA), reaching 600 million.
And the electric car? How does the great paradigm shift in the automotive industry affect Antolin? “For us, electromobility is an opportunity because it gives more prominence to the interior of the vehicle, incorporating more technology and solutions with the aim of turning it into an intelligent and sustainable space,” says Antolín.
The president of the company also sees connectivity and technologies such as artificial intelligence as two key elements in the evolution of automobiles. One of the challenges, he explains, is to offer lighter and more efficient components.
Nearly 40% of the electric cars manufactured last year around the world had Antolin components and, of the hundred brands to which the company supplies, a sixth are already one hundred percent electric. “It is a business for the future but also for the present,” says Antolín.
