Poland making moves to be larger automotive supplier

Like many from Poland, Tomasz Łuczyński moved to the UK for better wages. Following Poland's joining of the UE in 2004, hundreds of thousands of people from Poland have settled in the United Kingdom. Currently, over 1% of the UK population is Polish. But Tomasz Łuczyński didn't stick around. After working in a facility that remanufactured automotive parts, he returned to Poland to start his own large-vehicle parts refurbishing company, Elerte.

Poland has a history of rebuilding. Much of Warsaw needed to be rebuilt after the Nazis razed the city following an uprising of the Polish people. The country's break from communism in the late '80s and early '90s required the entire system to be rejiggered into a market economy. As of 2024, the country's GDP is 21st in the world. To see how Poland is increasing its stake in the world of automotive suppliers and technology, I visited a wide range of individually owned and government-funded companies and research facilities to where the country is and where it's going. At the center of all this is PGM (Polska Grupa Motoryzacyjna), the Polish Automotive Group.