Rolex produced 1.24 million timepieces in 2023 with sales of 10.1 billion Swiss francs ($11.5 billion), according to Bloomberg via Morgan Stanley’s annual report on watches. Despite those impressive figures, production looks set to rise significantly with a new manufacturing facility in Bulle, which is set to open in 2029 and was first announced in 2022. Bulle is a small municipality in the district of Gruyère, situated in the canton of Freiburg. According to the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Rolex published an official press release last Tuesday that included the first official photographic renderings of the new complex. This official communication came a mere three days before a building permit was officially submitted and published in the Feuille officielle du canton de Fribourg.
Image: Rolex
Rolex is one of the most integrated watch manufacturers in Switzerland, and its components are, for the most part, produced internally. The Rolex Group employs about 14,000 people worldwide, with about 9,000 of that workforce located in Switzerland. Its world headquarters are situated in Acacias in Geneva, where the watches are developed and assembled while the movements are manufactured in Bienne. The brand’s watch cases and bracelets are produced in Plan-les-Ouates, along with the dials, Cerachrom bezels, and Cerachrom bezel inserts. Finally, the brand’s gemmology and gem-setting expertise is located in Chêne-Bourg. The new location in Bulle will make up a fifth of the luxury watch manufacturer and will employ around 2,000 workers.
According to NZZ (linked below), the Bulle facility will consist of four production buildings connected by a central building. Rolex is aiming to attain the highest level of BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) certification, which would be a first for an industrial building in Switzerland. The Rolex objective is to reduce the energy consumption of buildings by 10% compared to a more conventional design.
The planned 100,000-square-meter facility in Bulle is set to cost upward of one billion Swiss francs. In the meantime, to aid in speeding up its manufacturing capacity, Rolex has built three temporary factories in Romont and Villaz-Saint-Pierre; these new temporary sites will have between 250 to 300 Rolex employees, all of which as slated to transfer to the Bulle location in six years.
For more information, please find the story from NZZ linked here.