Milestones

More than 300,000 vehicles are manufactured by Porsche every year. This is about six times the production at the turn of the millennium. The increase is largely due to the Leipzig Plant.

The decision in favor of Leipzig as Porsche’s second production site in addition to Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen was reached in 1999. Compared to its competitors, Leipzig scored points not least with a trailer showing a large, open, and immediately usable piece of land near the airport. Within three years, an ultramodern assembly plant was built there. Shortly after the production launch of the Cayenne, the team in Saxony excelled with another qualified and committed team performance right away. In manufactory work, the employees produced a limited edition of the super sports car Carrera GT between 2003 and 2006. The first expansion towards this end had already been made immediately after the opening of the plant.

The journey continued at the speed of a Porsche. Leipzig was able to prevail in the internal competition and brought additional model series to the site – initially, the sports sedan Panamera. The final assembly of the first generation started in 2009. For this purpose, the production was expanded, and a logistics center was built. In 2011, the company decided to produce the new Porsche model Macan, Cayenne’s “little brother,” entirely in Leipzig. This was accompanied by the expansion of the existing assembly plant into a so-called full plant with its car body construction and paint shop units. For the complete manufacturing of the second generation of the Panamera starting in 2016, the plant received in its fourth expansion phase a second car body construction unit and a quality center. With the compact SUV Macan and the sports sedan Panamera, the Leipzig Plant reached its full capacity which is why the Cayenne production ended here in 2017.  

Benchmark for Sustainable Automotive Production

The Leipzig Plant sets standards with a high level of quality awareness and with Porsche’s improvement process which is an integral part of the production system. This is best exemplified by the fact that the company was presented with the international Lean & Green Management Award 2021. Porsche impressed the jury, for example, with its resource efficiency program. With its own in-house “environmental impact reduction in production” indicator, the Leipzig Plant has become a benchmark in the automobile industry.

Yet Porsche does not restrict the topic of sustainability just to the factory workshops alone. Since 2002, the automobile manufacturer has been operating a unique grazing concept on its offroad terrain where aurochses, wild horses, honeybees, and other insects as well as numerous plant species have found a natural habitat. The area is also the location of the environmental education project “Porsche Safari.” Here, families and children aged 7 and older can go on a guided discovery tour through the natural landscape on the factory premises.

Those who arrive with an electric or hybrid vehicle, no matter which brand, can “refuel” their cars directly on site. The Porsche Experience Center has one of Europe’s most powerful rapid charging parks which is operated entirely with electricity from regenerative energy sources.

Future Outlook

With Porsche’s commitment in Leipzig, more than 4,300 new jobs have been created in the factory since 2002. In addition, there is a similarly large number of suppliers and service providers in the immediate vicinity who support the plant’s production and logistics. They all help ensure that a current total of about 550 Macan and Panamera cars are produced here every day.

The prospects are excellent that the success story of Porsche in Leipzig will be continued also in the future. For the second half of the decade, Porsche has announced another all-electric SUV above the Cayenne class. This vehicle is to be produced in Leipzig.