Peter MacLeod travelled to Wrocław in Poland to see how L&L Products has built resilience into its Tier 1 JIT automotive parts supply chain.
When American automotive supplier L&L Products faced mounting logistics challenges at its Polish manufacturing partner, PolPlas, it made the bold move to separate manufacturing from logistics with the help of a logistics partner, Geodis. The result is a 2,600 sq m vendor-managed inventory hub in Wrocław that’s transformed how the company serves Europe’s biggest automotive manufacturers.
The facility, operated by Geodis and officially inaugurated in October with – yes, a brass band and a large cake! – handles parts for Stellantis, BMW, Volkswagen/Audi, and Mercedes-Benz on tight just-in-time and just-in-sequence schedules. For Stellantis – which accounts for 40% of the flow through the facility – L&L works within a one-minute delivery window, a stark reminder of the stakes involved when a production line stoppage can cost between €2,000 and €6,000 per minute.
Strategic Location
“Previously, PolPlas was sending material directly to customers,” explains Antonin Dauphin, Supply Chain Projects Engineer at L&L Products, who masterminded the project. “If parts went back to [L&L’s Euro HQ in] France and then returned to Poland, it was nonsense. PolPlas’s core métier is manufacturing – they’re very good at that – whilst logistics was becoming a nightmare.”
The 665,000 sq m Wrocław facility, situated just off the E33 trans-Europe motorway corridor and shared with French furniture retailer Conforama, provides 2,000 pallet positions across multi-tier racking up to seven levels high. It’s a strategic location that shaves 400km off deliveries to L&L’s primarily German customer base, whilst supporting the company’s operations as a Tier 1 supplier.
L&L Products specialises in expandable materials that provide structural reinforcement, acoustic dampening, and sealing for automotive components. The company produces this proprietary material at its European headquarters near Strasbourg, then delivers it to subcontractors like PolPlas for incorporation into parts such as plastic fuel fillers. When heated, the material expands to form seals, effectively L&L’s “secret ingredient” in an industry built on tight tolerances and exacting specifications.
The Geodis facility includes dedicated quality control and packing areas that have eliminated the need to send rejected parts back to France for analysis. Six loading docks serve L&L’s needs, with two dedicated solely to PolPlas operations. The process runs on Geodis’s Optilog warehouse management system, which synchronises with L&L’s systems in France, ensuring the physical and IT flows remain aligned.
Meeting automotive manufacturers’ stringent packaging and labelling requirements was paramount. The SLA demands 99.5% accuracy, which the operation achieved from day one. When motorways become congested, a fleet of small vans can use local roads to ensure delivery windows are met, with Wrocław Airport occasionally pressed into service.
Impressive Timeline
The project timeline was ambitious. Following a three-month tender process, L&L signed with Geodis in September 2024, with implementation beginning in January 2025. Rather than switching all flows simultaneously, a phased approach was taken, onboarding new customers every two weeks from June through to August.
“At the beginning, you think it will work as expected, but some issues always appear,” Dauphin notes. “Geodis was very flexible and capable of developing new processes in their system. We’ve delivered without any line stop, which is the global objective in automotive.”
The results speak for themselves. Deliveries are up to 10 hours faster per shipment loop, with shorter transport routes contributing to L&L’s target of carbon neutrality by 2030.
Sophie Pacalet, Supply Chain Manager at L&L Products, credits Geodis’s ability to “absorb complexity, train cross-functional teams, and tailor solutions” as instrumental to success. For Jean-Michel Hollaender, President of L&L Products Europe, the hub represents “a turning point” that enhances resilience whilst creating a scalable platform for future European expansion.
With capacity to absorb new flows from other suppliers and regions, the Wrocław hub allows L&L Products to capture further opportunities for growth. It’s a blueprint for how separating production expertise from logistics operations can create a more resilient, future-ready supply chain.
