Infrastructure / cranes

Cranes Fill the Main Plant

The main plant’s production site is going through exceptionally intensive development. It is symbolised by the number of construction cranes towering above it.

Anyone who has looked around the Škoda Auto site in Mladá Boleslav in recent months will have noticed one striking thing – cranes. Never in modern history have so many of them worked here at the same time. Above the roofs of the production halls, several major investment projects are now under way that will be essential for the carmaker’s further development.

The scale of the investments taking place is well illustrated by specific figures. On the weekend before this year’s summer production shutdown, 20 cranes were working on the site at the same time, five of them tower cranes. The equipment ranged from smaller mobile units to true giants.

Equipment that commands respect

The new Paint Shop is being built with the help of the Liebherr LTM 1800, the largest mobile crane ever deployed in Czech Republic (see The largest cranes in numbers). Its deployment involved demanding logistics: besides the chassis itself, it required another eight lorries to carry the jibs, counterweights and other equipment. Among other tasks, this wheeled giant assembled the largest tower crane on the Paint Shop construction site. Incidentally, that crane alone had to be brought to the site by ten vehicles.

On the weekend before the summer shutdown began, another exceptional moment came when the second-largest mobile crane, the Liebherr LTM 1500, also arrived. It was therefore possible to see, side by side, equipment that appears on Czech construction sites only rarely. The newly delivered machine helped to position a tower crane directly inside the Press Shop. There, during the summer shutdown, it was used in one of the technically most demanding stages of the current investments – the construction of the new conveyor bridge that will link the Paint Shop under construction with the new high-bay body store (more about it in Škoda Mobil 4/2026). The structure runs above the roofs of the Body Shop and the Press Shop, and its construction requires exceptionally precise coordination between the construction, assembly and logistics teams.

Jan Babák

Head of PPB – Construction and Infrastructure Planning

Never in modern history have we had so many investment projects running on the site at the same time. The number of cranes above the plant is today the clearest visible proof of the scale of the changes we are preparing for the company’s future.

Investments are significantly changing the look of the plant

The new Paint Shop, the body store and the connecting conveyor bridge are among the largest projects being built on the site. At the same time, work continues on a new substation, the modernisation of the ŠKO-ENERGO heating plant and a range of other investments focused on developing the production, logistics and energy infrastructure.

“Cranes are today the most visible symbol of what is happening on the site. Each one of them represents a specific investment in the company’s future. When you look around the plant today, you can see the scale of the changes with your own eyes,” says Jan Babák, Head of PPB – Construction and Infrastructure Planning.

The cranes above the site have thus become a sign of a period of exceptionally intensive development. Whether it is the new Paint Shop, the body store, the conveyor bridge, the new substation, the modernisation of the heating plant or other projects, they all share one goal – to prepare Škoda Auto for the future and create the conditions for its further growth.