Corporate Giants: 10 of the World’s Biggest Factories
An efficient and fit for purpose factory is the key to success for any business, and while it’s true that a factory is a big investment, goods can be made and sold in bulk which really does reduce overall costs. As you might imagine, the biggest names in the corporate world can also afford to build and run some of the biggest factories. Here are the 10 of the biggest factories in the world, owned by names that you will definitely recognise.
The NASA Vehicle Assembly Building
This is the biggest single-storey building in the world. It covers eight acres of land and is 525 feet tall. It’s located between Miami and Jacksonville in Florida, and it was built in 1966. It built the Saturn V rocket that was used in the Apollo programme.
Constellation Bristol
Constellation Bristol is one of the world’s biggest beer and wine warehouses, measuring 850,000 sq ft and housing an eye watering 9.5 million gallons of alcohol. It stocks 57 million wine bottles, which equates to about 15% of the UK’s total wine market (how much wine do we drink, exactly??). The gargantuan wine lover’s dream cost £100 million to build.
Tesco Ireland Distribution Centre
This is Ireland’s largest building, measuring 80,194 square metres. The building is around half a mile in length, and it would take you on average 12 minutes to walk from one end to another. The centre opened in 2007 and cost 70 million Euros to build.
Belvidere Assembly Plant
This is a Chrysler Factory, located in Illinois. Among the cars assembled here are the Jeep Compass, the Jeep Patriot, and the Dodge Dart. The plant sits on 280 acres of land, and it’s staff are mainly robots-there are 780 robots at work in the body shop alone.
Mitsubishi Motors North America
Another car giant, Mitsubishi, built this plant in Illinois to manufacture, research, develop, and sell their cars across the US, Mexico, the Caribbean and Canada. The factory covers a massive 220,000 square metres.
Boeing Factory, Everett
Everett in Washington is where the largest Boeing factory in the world is located. It sits on 98.3 acres of land, and it’s where the Boeing 747, 767, 777 and the 787 Dreamliner are made. The factory was built in 1966, and it also includes coffee stands, a café, a theatre, and a Boeing store. The company also offers educational tours of the factory.
Tesla Factory
Tesla is all about electric cars and making electric train components. This huge factory in California covers 510,000 square metres and it was formerly owned by General Motors and Toyota. Tesla paid $42 million for the factory in 2010, then they began manufacturing the Tesla Model S, Model 3, Model X, and Roadster.
Aalsmeer Flower Auction Building, Holland
If you’ve ever bought flowers for Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day (if you haven’t, we won’t judge), they’ve probably arrived at your florist via this huge building. It sits on a huge 518,000 square metre space and it’s home to the world’s largest flower auction.
Around 25 million flowers are bought and sold every day here and they hail from as far away as Kenya, Colombia, Ethiopia and Ecuador.
Hyundai Motor Company’s Ulsan Factory, South Korea
This sprawling plant covers a whopping 1,225 acres of land. The site consists of five production plants that churn out a car every 12 seconds!- Yes, you read that right! That’s equal to over 1.5 million cars every year.
The site is so large that it has its own hospital, fire service, road network, and sewage treatment plant. There are also 500,000 trees on the site and a pier, where three 50,000 tonne cargo ships can dock at any one time.
Volkswagen Wolfsburg Plant
This is the largest car plant in the world and over 40 million cars have passed through its doors. It covers a huge 6,500,000 square metres and it’s so big that employees are allowed to travel around it on bicycles! The factory also has the largest state of the art paint shop in Europe which uses environmentally friendly water-based paint.
