On the anniversary of the Jeep Automotive Plant, in addition to the 900,000 cars produced, we celebrated the impact the factory has had in people's lives.

December 28, 2020 - On April 28, 2015, the Jeep Automotive Plant was born in Goiana (PE), a municipality located in a region that did not have an automotive industry. "It's an industrial success story," says Pierluigi Astorino, one of the plant's initial implementation and operations head and now FCA's Director of Manufacturing for Latin America. Born as the most modern FCA factory in the world, the plant remains focused, on its fifth anniversary, on the challenges to achieve innovation, maintain its edge and invest in the development of people.

In these five years, more than 900,000 cars have left the factory and the production of the three models (the SUVs Jeep Renegade and Compass and the SUP Fiat Toro) took place in the first 18 months of operation. Although it is a car factory, the Jeep Automotive Plant goes far beyond that.

Watch the five-episode webseries that talks about The Jeep Plant’s achievements in these five years:

Sustainability

The arrival of Jeep in Pernambuco, specifically in the Mata Norte, the region where the plant is installed, represented a great opportunity for the company to boost its sustainability strategy and launching new challenges presented by the territory. "It was the chance to use our knowledge to act strongly in the axes of environment and education. In this sense, we made a broad diagnosis and some projects were designed, always in an integrated way with the community", explains Luciana Costa, FCA Sustainability Coordinator for Latin America.

The factory was the first automotive plant in Latin America to conquer the Carbon Neutral label in 2017. And in 2020, the entire Plant obtained the seal of neutral emissions, including the Supplier Park plants. Jeep also implemented the Biodiversity Program, which has as one of its initiatives a nursery with the production of seedlings, threatened with extinction, from the native species of the Atlantic Forest. The seedlings are produced and planted in the factory itself and in the region, promoting the recovery of the native flora. There are already 106,000 seedlings planted in the nursery or donated to the communities.

The plant also reached the first "Aterro Zero" (Zero Landfill) mark in the Northeast. Since October 2015, 100% of the waste generated is sent for recycling and reuse. In addition, the plant reached the rate of 99.5% recircled water: in a period of one month, the equivalent of 28,000 cubic meters of natural resources (eight Olympic swimming pools) are no longer used from the public supply network.

With the Biodiversity Program, FCA produces and plants seedlings of native species from the Atlantic Forest threatened with extinction.

"We believe in a single road: education"

In the area of education, these five years have represented a period of great progress. Jeep has implemented projects to boost municipal public education policies, helping municipalities improve the quality of education offered in the public schools. For this, the projects Rota do Saber and Vozes Daqui were created.

The first benefited about 30,000 students and 2,000 teachers from 183 schools in six cities in the region: Goiana, Igarassu, Paulista and Itambé, in Pernambuco; and Alhandra and Caaporã, in Paraíba. Based on a project for the qualification of pedagogical managers and elementary school teachers in public education, the program implemented changes in the daily life/curriculum of schools which were reflected in the Basic Education Development Index (IDEB). In the municipality of Igarassu, the first to be part of the project, the performance indicator for the Elementary Schools I went from 3.9 in 2013 to 4.6 in 2017 – an 18% improvement. In the same period, the average in the Elementary Schools II went up 46%, jumping from 2.8 to 4.1. In the last IDEB result for this municipality, the data was even better. This is because the indicator for the Elementary Schools I went from 4.6 in 2017 to 5.1 in 2019, exceeding the target set (4.8) and reaching what was planned for 2021. In the same period, the Index for Elementary Schools II also increased, from 4.1 to 4.7.

Vozes Daqui was created when a gap between schools and the community was identified. "We needed to strengthen this relationship and stimulate the role of youngsters as agents of transformation", explains Luciana. The project currently involves about 450 elementary school II students, 25 teachers and school managers, as well as 40 leaders and community residents. In December, two schools received libraries through the project. These spaces were conceived and implemented by the youngsters themselves.

Among the initiatives conceived by the students of schools participating in Vozes Daqui is the library of the Municipal School Irmã Marie Armelle Falguieres.

"These projects are a two-way street, promoting mutual learning for the municipalities and for the company itself," Luciana said. For the next five years, she ensures that the Jeep Automotive Plant will continue to work together with city halls, the society and youngsters, to achieve better results so that education, which is one of the pillars of FCA, can be strengthened even further.

The partnership between Jeep and the community also took place in the health field. With the Covid-19 pandemic, in May, FCA built a Specialized Pernambuco Care Unit (UPAE) that began to act as a Reference Hospital. The hospital had 100 beds dedicated to patients suspected of having Covid -19 and others confirmed with the disease. It was comprised of ten ICUs with respiratory support. The initiative was one of the actions FCA implemented to help fight the epidemic in Latin America.

Jeep: transforming lives in Pernambuco since 2015

As the Jeep Automotive Plant manager since July of this year, Juliana Coelho believes that employees evolve along with the factory.

Jeep automotive plant manager, Juliana Coelho evaluates that, since 2015, Jeep already had a vision that went beyond the production of cars. "We need to evolve together with the region in which we are inserted and, for this, we believe in a single road: education," she says. In practice, Jeep took responsibility for empowering and developing people. Today, the Jeep Plant has 14,600 employees, including the Supplier Park.

"I know employees who have been working at the Plant since the beginning and who say 'Juliana, I just graduated'. People who sometimes didn't even have high school diploma and who ended up going to a technical school or college and getting a degree. The factory has brought a strong development here, and it's surprising how, in five years, the Automotive Plant has managed to change people's lives," she says.

In the history of the Jeep Automotive Plant, according to Astorino, this was the main change: "we were able to work on the formation of people and in the development of a generation with a better awareness of topics such as the environment and education. Clearly, this will enable people to have new stories. There was a great economic impact, but even more on a social level, because it generated many opportunities for change in their lives."

It was a change that also happened in Juliana's life. The 31-year-old chemical engineer began working at the plant seven years ago as a paint specialist in the plant's first team. In July 2020, she was promoted to plant manager, a position previously held by Astorino, and became the first woman to run an automotive factory in Latin America. "At FCA, we work with career development, so I imagined there would be a next step. In addition, we believe in inclusion as a value. So, it's something that makes me very happy, especially because I can inspire people," she says.

Alan Borges (center) believes that the training carried out by FCA transforms people's lives.

For Alan Borges, supervisor in training at the Jeep Plant, FCA's concern in training and giving people opportunities makes a difference. "It was remarkable. It was a radical impact in my life and on my family," he says. Alan has been at the Plant since the beginning, and on the five-year anniversary, he says "it’s like a movie going through my head." "I developed and evolved along with the plant. I went through these different jobs such as process executioner, technician in mechanics and today I am a supervisor in training", he says.

The transformation, for him, took place financially, socially and intellectually. "A lot of people I know from here used to work in the sugarcane fields or didn't work at all. And just like me today, they even have health insurance. So, if it made a difference in my life, imagine how many families have not benefited from the arrival of Jeep in these five years?".

In the infographic below you follow the timeline of the main achievements of the Jeep Automotive Plant in these five years.

Words: Isabela Alves

Pictures: Marketing

Art: Fabricio Moura