the J.Juan Group
The Barcelona based J.Juan Group has announced that daily management of the business is now being passed on to a younger member of the second generation of family ownership, with 45-year-old José Luis Juan taking over as CEO.
José Luis came back into the business in 2005 with extensive and impressive business experience and academic achievement already on his résumé, having spent time with the likes of IBM, La Caixa, and global professional services provider Accenture.
The Physics and Electronic Superior Engineering Barcelona University graduate, who also has a master's degree in Management from the ESADE business school in Barcelona and another in networks and telecommunications by La Salle University in the United States, takes over at an interesting time for the business his father founded in 1965.
The challenge of creating a corporate structure for the management and further growth of Europe’s second largest brake systems manufacturer (and global #1 in the manufacture of braided hydraulic hoses) comes after the turnover of the business grew from 30 million Euro in 2014 to a forecast of 43.5 million at the end of 2016 (+40% in just two years, having doubled in the past eight years) and with the Group’s plans calling for it to double from there by 2020.
José Luis will be supported by the experience of his brothers, Angeles and Carlos Juan, who will both remain with the Group in Vice President roles; strength in depth where the management of the business is concerned will be at a premium in the coming years.
With customer demand driving growth and expansion, their production facilities are being used profitably just as quickly as they are able to develop them. The Group’s factories at Gavá and Sant Cugat near Barcelona, Jiaxing, Zhejiang, near Shanghai, Jalgaon, near Mumbai in India and, soon, at Monterey in Mexico, look likely to be operating at full capacity quite quickly.
As an OEM supplier to most of the major motorcycle manufacturers and many of the smaller ones too – they have 80 OEM clients all over the world and equipping a claimed 90% of western bikes – there appears to be no end in sight to their growth opportunities. The enlargement of their production capacity in Europe, China and India has been essential to meet the orders from their existing customers.
At Sant Cugat, north of Barcelona, the company has been granted reindustrialisation permission (in November last year) for a former Delphi Automotive manufacturing facility which the Group acquired, where J.Juan will localise all its European production of brakes, with the Gavá facility to the south-west of the city focussed on the production of braided hydraulic hose products.
The beginning of 2016 saw the completion of a programme of expansion for their Chinese factory, 10 years after the Group founded it – a factory where productivity is said to run at some 100,000 Euro for each employee. J.Juan China has gained an important position in the Asian market.
The big technology story for J.Juan in India has been the success there of its Gavá developed Combined Brake System (CBS) – subject to the model, ABS and CBS have been made mandatory for all new 125cc+ motorcycles sold in India from April 2017.
So, at the beginning of 2017, after years of effort and leadership, Angeles and Carlos Juan have put their trust in the younger brother of the family to take over the leadership of a company that is much transformed and set for dramatic further growth in the years ahead.
Hopefully their knowledge and experience will be there for the business to draw on for years to come, as José Luis Juan builds new foundations for further growth and development of a business that enjoys a hard earned, carefully developed and very valuable reputation throughout the global motorcycle market.
www.jjuan.es
