March 2012 – Ten years after the inauguration of its manufacture in Neuchâtel, Officine Panerai announces the start of work for creating a new factory into which all the activities of development, production and assembly of the brand’s watches and movements will be transferred and brought together. The new production facility will be opened at the end of 2013 and it will be at Pierre-à-Bot, on the heights above Neuchâtel. Its birth will complete the progress which in just a few years has established the Florentine brand all over the world as one of the most important productive expressions of haute horlogerie sports watches.

The new factory will be a remarkable means of optimizing the production process in terms of both quantity and quality. At the moment, the stages of development, manufacturing the various components, assembly and quality control are all carried out by Officine Panerai internally but they take place in different production sites. The unification of the various stages in a single location which is also significantly larger will bring several benefits to the production, to the benefit all admirers of Panerai watches: higher capacity, greater independence in all stages of production and better quality control.

The new Panerai manufacture will have an area of 10,000 square metres in which there will be 290 employees, 130 more than the 160 who are currently employed at the building in the centre of Neuchâtel, where the brand is located at the moment. In addition to the production lines, equipped with the very latest technologies, there will be space in the new manufacture for all the trades related to the prototyping, production, assembly and rigorous quality control of the components, movements and cases of Panerai watches, trades that are carried out by master watchmakers and their highly skilled colleagues.

Inside the new building there will be a large space for the Workshop of Ideas, the area where all the research and development activities which for years have been behind the innovative drive of the brand will be consolidated. Materials research, the study and design of new movements together with the continuous refinement of the quality and creativity expressed by its products are fundamental requirements of a brand which finds in its history and its military origins the need to surpass its own standards so as to meet the requirements of its demanding customers.

As has always been the case, the activities of the manufacture at Neuchâtel will carry out the completion and execution of the creative ideas of the Panerai designers who contribute to preserving one of the most distinctive elements of the brand: the combination of Italian history, design and passion with Swiss precision, craftsmanship and technical watchmaking knowledge which makes Panerai watches unique and immediately recognizable all over the world.

In the words of Angelo Bonati, CEO of Officine Panerai, “In 1997 a great adventure was begun which has been creating the foundations for the future development of the Panerai brand and for its perpetuity”.

The new Officine Panerai manufacture will have zero environmental impact in terms of carbon dioxide through careful integration of technologies for the recovery and recycling of resources, devices for reducing emissions and eco-sustainable mobility policies for employees.