thyssenkrupp Automotive Technology (Division of thyssenkrupp AG)

Core Business

thyssenkrupp Automotive Technology concentrates the automotive metalworking DNA of one of Europe's great industrial houses. Its FY2024/25 revenue of €7.035 billion flows from camshafts (global #1 at 30+ million units a year), steering columns via Presta, forged springs and stabilizers, crankshafts, and undercarriage components—categories where German forging discipline and thyssenkrupp steel metallurgy translate directly into microstructure quality rivals struggle to match. The division anchors the parent group's Automotive Technology segment and supplies virtually every major OEM across combustion, hybrid, and electric platforms.

Global Presence

Headquartered in Essen, the division runs approximately 90 production bases across four continents with 28,892 employees—forging and machining clusters in Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain, and Liechtenstein-rooted Presta operations, mirrored by plants in China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and the United States. This footprint delivers regionally balanced supply to European premium brands, American truck programs, and Asian volume OEMs simultaneously, while shared metallurgical standards keep component properties identical across continents.

Key Strengths

Scale leadership in camshafts and springs gives thyssenkrupp pricing resilience even in down-cycles, and its rotor-shaft technology transfers forging know-how directly into electric-motor hardware—a genuine ICE-to-EV bridge. The APEX efficiency program proved its worth with adjusted EBIT climbing 10% to €211 million in Q1 FY2025/26 despite soft volumes, showcasing cost discipline. Parent-group steel research provides alloy development depth unavailable to independent forges, and the four-continent asset base constitutes a hard-to-replicate hardware foundation for global OEMs.

Challenges & Outlook

The division faces a ~7% revenue decline driven by weak call-offs and contraction in plant-engineering activities, while the Presta steering restructuring—1,800 positions to be cut—underscores the cost of migrating legacy ICE capacity. Group-level portfolio reshaping at thyssenkrupp AG adds strategic uncertainty. Still, with camshaft cash flows funding rotor-shaft and lightweight-forging expansion, and APEX savings compounding, the division is engineering a controlled transition that should stabilize margins through FY2026/27.