Last September, Mitsubishi bought 15% of its long-term Scandinavian partner Beijers Electronics Automation for SEK45m (€4.8m) and it has recently acquired Tre Diamanti, the rebranded distribution arm of the Italian drives specialist, SCS. Tre Diamanti, which is Mitsubishi’s largest drives distributor in Europe, sells €11m-worth of inverters a year.

Mitsubishi is also opening Factory Automation (FA) Centres in the Czech Republic and Poland to support its Central and Eastern European automation business.

Mitsubishi sees Europe as being a vital region, with the eastward expansion of the European Union being a driver that will fuel economic growth for decades, partly through a dynamic, high-performance manufacturing sector.

"Mitsubishi Electric has been actively building its automation business across Europe since the inception of its pan-European business group in 2003," says Noriaki Himi (above), product marketing director for Mitsubishi Factory Automation in Europe. "With these latest actions we are cementing our commitment to the European market and plan to be one of the leading suppliers of hi-tech quality automation products for long into the foreseeable future."

Last year, Mitsubishi boosted its European sales of compact PLCs by 17%, modular controllers by 23%, servo systems by 24.7% and frequency inverter drives by 16.7%.