TORSUS Opens Second Slovak Plant, Expands Off-Road Vehicle Production

TORSUS, the Czech-headquartered builder of heavy-duty off-road vehicles, opened its second Slovak manufacturing facility in Ilava on July 23, 2026. The new site adds 100 jobs, pushing the company's total Slovak workforce beyond 150 people. Combined with an existing pre-assembly operation in Horné Srnie, TORSUS now covers 9,420 square meters of manufacturing space in the region.

Annual production capacity at the expanded footprint is now set at 200 TERRASTORM and 50 PRAETORIAN vehicles per year. The company says running multiple models and customer projects through production at the same time is now realistic, rather than a bottleneck.

In-house 3D printing becomes part of the assembly line

The Ilava facility houses TORSUS' Digital R&D Centre. Engineers use SolidWorks and Plasticity to model components, assemblies, and complete vehicle systems before any metal gets cut. In-house 3D printing then turns those models into physical prototypes for testing on real vehicles. Custom parts, enclosures, interfaces, and mounting systems can be printed, fitted, and revised without waiting for external tooling.

A dedicated prototyping area sits alongside a vehicle lift and specialist engineering workstations. The same site also runs laser cutting and metal bending for structural parts, brackets, and underbody protection. The goal is to keep design iteration moving at the same speed as the assembly line.

Vakhtang Dzhukashvili, founder and CEO of TORSUS, said Slovakia gives the company access to deep automotive engineering expertise, a strong supplier network, and a location that serves global customers without crossing continents.

Why this matters for 3D printing

TORSUS is following the same playbook used by much larger automakers. BMW opened a 15 million euro additive manufacturing campus in Munich to bring prototype production, series parts manufacturing, and 3D printing research under one roof. Jaguar Land Rover treats in-house 3D printing as essential to keeping pace with a 400,000-vehicle-per-year production line.

The lesson is consistent: 3D printing stops being a novelty when it moves from a service bureau to the factory floor. TORSUS is doing that at a smaller scale but with the same logic. Prototyping, production engineering, and assembly now share a roof. That cuts lead time on custom parts and keeps the engineering team from falling behind the production schedule.

The company has now completed more than 350 projects and supplied over 5,000 vehicles across 20 countries. Volkswagen AG standards govern incoming-part inspection, assembly procedures, documentation, traceability, and final certification.