Adidas to launch robot-made shoes in Germany

Adidas, the German maker of sportswear and equipment, announced Tuesday that it will start marketing its first series of sportshoes manufactured by robots in Germany from 2017.

More than 20 years after Adidas ceased production activities in Germany and moved them to Asia instead, chief executive Herbert Hainer, unveiled to the press the group’s new prototype “Speedfactory” in Ansbach in southern Germany.

The new state-of-the-art 4,600-square-metre plant is still being built, but Adidas showed off a foretaste of it to the press, promising to automatise shoe production, currently done mostly by hand in Asia, and enable the shoes to be made more quickly and closer to its sales outlets.

The factory will deliver a first test series of around 500 pairs of shoes to be sold from the third quarter of 2016.

Large-scale production will then begin in 2017 and Adidas is planning a second “Speed Factory” in the United States in the same year, said Hainer.

The group is targetting production of around “half a million shares per year within three to five years” at each site, said Gerd Manz, head of innovation and technology.

CEO Hainer insisted that the speed factories would not immediately replace the work of sub-contractors done in Asia.