Since its foundation in 1905, Ayats, owned by the Vilà family, has been a benchmark in the manufacture of buses and coaches. This company was born in Arbúcies, in the middle of the Montseny Park, at a time when being located near a wooded area was essential in order to have the raw materials necessary for the construction of wooden vehicles.
Although initially dedicated to bodywork, from the late 1980s, it became one of the only two companies in the entire country capable of manufacturing integral vehicles. And in the mid-2000s, he created Europe’s first OpenTop bus, intended for urban tourist routes, a revolutionary roofless vehicle that today can be found in virtually any European city.
Throughout these 115 years of history, Ayats has known how to combine the wisdom of extensive experience with a passion for innovation. The arrival of the pandemic in 2020, with the consequent mobility restrictions, had an inevitable impact for a company dedicated to supplying the transport sector, which even caused the temporary closure of the Tona factory when the demand for vehicles plummeted. . But that did not cause discouragement to spread at any time, rather it spurred the imagination to give birth to new projects.
Now fully recovered from that period, this year Ayats is facing various major challenges, such as the electrification of its bus fleet or the diversification of its line of business, extending its activity towards the remodeling of trains or the manufacture of paddle tennis rackets.
When the different governments of the European cities began to be aware of the environmental challenges we are currently facing and promoted more restrictive legislation for diesel, Ayats set to work providing solutions to customers for its nearly 200 OpenTop vehicles.
After having managed to create an electric vehicle from scratch, the first double-decker in all of Spain, the next step was to transform diesel buses and coaches into fully electric versions, so that they would not have to be withdrawn from circulation, which also It is serving to avoid the generation of waste.
At the same time, Ayats has decided to ally with Colway Ferroviaria, a company specializing in railway interior design with whom they have established multiple synergies, to enter a contest –in which they were proclaimed winners– for the remodeling of 16 trains on line 112 –popularly known as “el metro del Vallès”– of the Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya. This has had the design of Magma Design. The project will last approximately two and a half years, and is expected to generate about 30 direct jobs (between direct and indirect, there will be about 50 jobs).
Ayats and Colway have already invested more than one million euros and are currently working on remodeling a first prototype which, once validated, will allow series production of 60 wagons to begin. To carry out this ambitious transformation, it was necessary to have large warehouses like the ones Ayats has in Tona, which can house up to 3 trains at a time. Both companies have also developed innovative methods in work processes, which allow trains to be moved without having to fit out special tracks inside the ships.
It is a “half-life” project, which consists of a complete rehabilitation of the trains (which are made up of 4 wagons that weigh about 30 tons each), and which is carried out precisely towards the middle of the vehicle’s useful life. , in order to extend its operation for another 15 or 20 years, thus avoiding its removal and ending up generating tons of waste.
In addition to making an important contribution to sustainability and the fight against the carbon footprint, this remodeling will also lead to improvements in the economic sphere and in the provision of services for the public as a whole, allowing an increase in the frequency of train circulation. , from intervals of 5 minutes to 2.5.
Ayats’ willingness to offer his industrial and technological experience at the service of new proposals has also led him to acquire, at the beginning of 2022, the company KarbonDesign, specialized in the manufacture of paddle tennis rackets for various brands. Thanks to Ayats’ resources and manufacturing capacity, it has already managed to double production in the first year alone. This has been possible by being able to count on an additional space of 15% of the Tona warehouse and also with experience as coachbuilders, which has served to introduce new, highly innovative production methods in this sector.
This 2023, Ayats plans to employ 200 people throughout the group. This, together with the activities to remodel railways and electric vehicles or retrofits – as the transformation from a combustion vehicle to a zero-emission vehicle is called – confirms that the company is currently experiencing one of its best moments.
The creation of new jobs in a warehouse that had been unused for a long time due to Covid-19 and the desire to diversify the industrial fabric of the area are, of course, magnificent news, which encourages us to think that this company, linked to the landscape of Osona and La Selva await at least 100 more years of success.
