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Kuka Systems acquires Utica Companies

Kuka Systems Group, Augsburg, Germany, has acquired the plant engineering business of privately owned Utica Companies of Shelby Township, Mich., a welding equipment supplier to the automobile industry. About 300 Utica employees have joined Kuka Systems. No jobs were eliminated.

Kuka Systems North America LLC, Sterling Heights, Mich., part of Kuka Systems Group, provides production line automation, flexible manufacturing concepts, and robotic cells for specific assembly processes, including new welding technologies for joining steel to steel or metals with different thermal coefficients such as steel and alloys of aluminum.

The Utica acquisition primarily covers automobile assembly-related assets in southeastern Michigan. Kuka Systems will absorb Utica's body structure business that builds car body assembly lines and subsystems, as well as products such as laser welding heads, net form and pierce systems for joining body sections, standard pressroom automation for metal stamping, and hang-on technologies for installing parts on assembly lines.