Munich: Adidas, the German maker of sportswear and equipment, announced yesterday that it will start marketing its first series of sports shoes manufactured by robots in Germany from 2017.
More than 20 years after Adidas ceased production activities in Germany and moved them to Asia instead, chief executive Herbert Hainer, unveiled to the Press the group’s new prototype “Speedfactory” in Ansbach in southern Germany.
The new state-of-the-art 4,600-square-metre plant is still being built, but Adidas showed off a foretaste of it to the Press, promising to automatise shoe production, currently done mostly by hand in Asia, and enable the shoes to be made more quickly and closer to its sales outlets.
The factory will deliver a first test series of around 500 pairs of shoes to be sold from the third quarter of 2016.
Adidas is planning a second “Speed Factory” in the US in the same year, said Hainer.