Kia Europe (KME) is the European sales, marketing and service division of Kia Corporation (KMC), based in Seoul, South Korea. With its purpose-built headquarters located in the heart of Frankfurt, Germany, KME’s staff is efficiently run and highly motivated. The company structure encourages individuals to make vital contributions to its operations and the multi-cultural dynamic is home to more than 26 different nationalities.
Kia’s European headquarters is also home to Kia’s Design Centre, which has contributed to making Kia a highly desirable brand in Europe, with products that have their own distinctive design signature.
Since 2003, Kia’s product range in Europe has expanded from covering just 35% of market segments to more than 80% today. That expansion has helped Kia’s European sales increase every year since 2008, achieving sales across Western and Eastern Europe of 385,000 units in 2015.
Costing € 1.6 billion to design and construct, Kia’s state-of-the art European manufacturing facility in Žilina, Slovakia, now caters for almost 54% of European demand for Kia’s extensive product range. Kia’s Žilina facility is home to European production of the best-selling Sportage crossover SUV, Venga compact MPV and cee’d model family (incorporating the cee’d five-door hatch, pro_cee’d three-door and cee’d Sportswagon).
The facility, which produced its first car – the cee’d – at the end of 2006, is capable of manufacturing more than 300,000 cars annually. In 2015, Kia proudly announced the production of the one-millionth cee’d model to roll off the Žilina production line. In the same year, the factory produced more than 100,000 units of the Kia Sportage, breaking the model’s annual production record.
