Factories with well-established production are a prime necessity for the success of any company engaged in the production of light industrial goods and even for the well-being of the economy as a whole. Companies can monopolize an entire market by cleverly identifying a sought-after product and building a factory that specializes in mass-producing it.
While a plant is a huge investment with equally extensive maintenance costs, these plants are used for mass production and distribution, keeping final costs to a minimum. These companies not only save money on price, their factories also allow them to create jobs, although not with the highest wages, especially if they are built near cities.
Walmart is the most famous and largest discount store in the United States. The company has a number of huge distribution centers that serve 11,088 stores in their network. Walmart's rival, the well-known Target chain, has four distribution centers for imported goods, which provide the entire network with the necessary quantities of imported goods. Hyundai and Volkswagen have the world's largest automobile factories, through which they maintain their competitiveness in the market by constantly expanding and increasing their production.
These institutions and companies, which have the largest factories in the world, usually also own the most famous and influential brands in the world. Below are fifteen of the largest factories in the world and the brands behind them.
15. NASA Vehicle Assembly Building
The NASA Vertical Assembly Building, located between Miami and Jacksonville, is the largest single-story building in the world.
It was built in 1966 so that it could properly assemble the Saturn V rocket, which was used for the Apollo program. The building covers an area of 32,374 square meters and has an impressive volume of 3.66 million cubic meters. The height of the building is 160 meters, and the area it occupies is 3.25 hectares. This assembly building also has some of the most impressive features in the world, setting it apart from other similar buildings. The building contains four 139 meter high doors, which are gigantic by any standards, as well as 71 cranes and over 98,000 tons of steel.
14. Shipyard "Meyer Werft Dockhalle 2"
Meyer Werft is one of the largest shipyards located in Germany.
This company was founded in 1795 and on its territory there is one of the largest shipyards in the world - Dockhalle 2. This shipyard covers an impressive area of 63,000 square meters and is mainly used for the construction of cruise ships. This covered dry dock is 504 meters long, 125 meters wide and 75 meters high. Among the ships built at this plant are the following: “Norwegian Star”, “Norwegian Dawn”, “Radiance of the Seas”, “Brilliance of the Seas” ), "AIDAbella" and "Pearl of Norway" (Norwegian Jewel).
13. Aerium
Aerium is a rebuilt factory that was originally supposed to be a boathouse. The Nazis built this huge building in the early years of World War II to develop their military base.
They occupied the building until 1945, when the Red Army captured it. The Soviet army increased the runway from 1,000 to 25,000 meters. This made the building an excellent place to store fighter jets. In 1994, after German reunification, a group of Soviet troops in Germany returned the base to the German government. Two years later, a company called CargoLifter purchased the building to build airships.
Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt after six years. The building was sold to a Malaysian company, which used it to build a tropical theme park.
12. Constellation Bristol
Constellation Bristol is a wine connoisseur's dream, as it is the largest beer and wine storage facility in the world. The storage area is as much as 78,967 square meters. The Bristol Constellation holds an astonishing amount of alcohol, namely 35,961 cubic metres. This is comparable in size to 14 Olympic swimming pools.
There are 57 million bottles of wine in storage, representing approximately 15 percent of the UK's entire wine market. The building took three years and £100 million to construct. The storage facility produces approximately 800 bottles per minute, which is 6,000,000 bottles daily.
11. Tesco Ireland Distribution Center
This distribution center is the largest building in Ireland. It opened in 2007. The area of the center, which stores food and electrical goods, is 80,194 square meters. This building is simply huge. It is almost 805 meters long, meaning it would take the average person about 12 minutes to walk from one end to the other.
The Tesco center also features hundreds of loading ramps and cost €70 million to build.
10. Lauma Fabrics
The Lauma Fabriks company specializes in the production of lace and materials for underwear. It also produces elastic bands and fabric. As one of the largest companies in this industry, Lauma Fabrics has one of the largest factories in the world.
The plant is 225 meters long, 505 meters wide and covers an area of 115,645 square meters. Construction of the plant began in 1965 in the city of Liepaja in Latvia, at a time when the unemployment rate in the country was quite high. Initially, the plant was called "Ladies' Toiletries Factory", but later, in 1965, the name of the plant changed to "Lauma Fabriks".
9. Jean-Luc Lagardere Plant
The Jean-Luc Lagardère plant is primarily used as a final assembly line for the $428 million production of the 800-seat Airbus A380. The plant is located in Toulouse-Blagnac. The final assembly line is 470 meters long and covers an area of 122,500 square meters.
Parts of the Airbus A380 are manufactured in various locations, including Spain, the UK, Germany and France. These parts are then brought to the Jean-Luc Lagardère factory for final assembly. The assembled airbus is being tested at the same plant. With a total area of 200 hectares, the plant also includes the company's restaurants, a full-scale Airbus fuel production plant, and 20 hectares of runways.
8. Warehouse for imported goods of the Target network
Target is the second-largest discount retail chain in the United States, so the company needed a huge warehouse for imported goods. Of all the warehouses in the network, Targets Import Warehouse is the largest and occupies a total area of 185,800 square meters.
The company built this warehouse to distribute imported goods to its domestic distribution centers. It's understandable why the company needed such a large building for this purpose: the Target chain has 1,934 stores located throughout North America. Stores are constantly in need of new supplies to keep customers happy. In addition to this warehouse, the company has three more, although they are not as huge as this one.
7. Belvidere Assembly Plant
The Belvidere Assembly Plant is located in Illinois, USA. It is owned by Chrysler, which produces such brands as the Jeep Compass, Jeep Patriot and Dodge Dart. The plant also assembled cars that are no longer in production, such as the Dodge Caliber, Chrysler Imperial, Dodge Dynasty, Chrysler New Yorker and Plymouth Neon.
The plant covers an area of 330,000 square meters. Its length is 700 meters and its width is 300 meters. It is located on an area of 114 hectares. The workforce is largely made up of robots, of which there are more than 780 in the body shop alone.
6. Mitsubishi Motors North America building
Founded in 1981, Mitsubishi Motors North America manages the production, sales and development of Mitsubishi vehicles in the United States, Mexico, the West Indies and Canada through a well-established network of more than 700 auto dealers.
To keep up with demand, the company built this huge plant, covering an area of 220,000 square meters, which mainly produces Mitsubishi Outlander cars. It also produces other car brands such as Mitsubishi Galant, Eclipse, Eclipse Spyder, Endeavor and Chrysler Sebring. This huge plant is located in Normal, Illinois.
5. Boeing Factory in Everett
Everett, Washington, is home to the world's largest Boeing manufacturing plant. The Boeing plant in Everett occupies an astonishingly huge area of 398,000 square meters. The territory related to the plant is 39.7 hectares. This is where the Boeing 747, 767 and 777 are manufactured, and where the recently launched 787 Dreamliner is also assembled.
Construction of the plant began in 1966 after Pan American World Airways placed an order for 25 Boeing 747s at a cost of $525 million. The plant also houses Tully's Cafeteria, a theater and a Boeing store. The company also provides tours of the Future of Flight Aviation Center, as well as Boeing tours.
4. Tesla Factory
Elon Musk's Tesla Company has been on everyone's lips lately. Tesla Motors specializes exclusively in the production of electric cars and components for electric road trains. This extensive automobile production plant is located in Fremont, California and covers an area of 510,000 square meters.
The company did not build this plant from scratch. Instead, it purchased a plant previously owned by General Motors and Toyota, known as New United Motor Manufacturing. Tesla Motors reportedly paid $42 million for it and took ownership in 2010. This plant produces electric cars such as the Tesla Model S, Model 3, Model X and Roadster.
3. Aalsmeer Flower Auction Building
The flower auction building in Aalsmeer is not, in fact, an industrial plant, however, it is the largest building in the world in terms of its space. It covers a huge area of 518,000 square meters. The building hosts the world's largest flower auction. The length of the building is 740 meters and the width is 700 meters.
In this building, 25 million flowers are sold and bought every day from countries such as Kenya, Colombia, Ethiopia and Ecuador. The building sits on a 98-hectare site and is supposedly the most fragrant building in the world. All flowers are checked for defects before sale. Sales increase greatly during the holidays. The peak occurs on International Women's Day and Valentine's Day.
2. Hyundai Motor Company's Ulsan plant
The Hyundai Motor plant in Ulsan covers an area of 5,050,000 square meters. This South Korean plant occupies a total area of 496 hectares. This area contains five separate factories, which together produce one car every 12 seconds. This is equivalent to 1.53 million cars per year.
This building is so huge that it has its own hospital, fire department, road network and even a sewage treatment plant. Hyundai Motor's Ulsan plant also boasts more than 500,000 trees and its own pier, which can handle three 50,000-ton cargo ships at a time.
1. Volkswagen's Wolfsburg Plant
Over the years, the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg has produced more than 40 million vehicles. It is the largest automobile plant in the world, covering an area of 6,500,000 square meters. This impressive factory is so huge that workers are allowed to ride bicycles to get around. Another interesting fact about this plant is that workers can simultaneously work on assembling five cars without any reduction in efficiency or quality of work.
The plant also boasts the largest paint shop in Europe, equipped with the latest technology. This is the first paint shop to use environmentally friendly water-based paint.
