The Company

Klean Komponents can trace is proud history back to the beginnings of the automotive industry over 100 years ago – 1905 to be exact. Its founder Jock Manifold – a Scottish migrant – can claim his place beside all those motoring pioneers – Ford, Citroen, Benz, Agnelli, Rootes and Peugeot - and many more. Starting from a small independent workshop, Manifold Engineering grew with the industry so that in the 1920s, its small workshop had grown to employ 1,500 people.

Manifold Engineering c.1923

At that point Jock’s son Sandy (Alexander the Great as he is known in the company) was appointed CEO and began a take-over campaign of lesser rivals. Growth continued and in the middle of the century, the company became a major supplier to the producers of components for military vehicles and was involved with production for the defence industry. In 1949 the company decided to list on the stock exchange and – to reflect its bigger size – the company name was changed to Amalgamated Automotive Engineering (AAE) Inc.

Following further organic growth and the takeover of a major rival in 1975, it became the biggest supplier of auto components in the world with facilities in 35 countries and a workforce in excess of 50,000.

At this time, the company recognised that its existing name did not fully reflect either the company’s wide range of customers – from the traditional automotive to armaments to aeronautics and space. Reflecting also the company’s increasing concern for environmental protection – in which it had always taken a lead – the company’s name was changed to Klean Komponents Inc. Today, production spans five continents, our products are found in cars marketed in almost every country across the globe and our components have been used in space programmes. The workforce today is in the region of 90,000.

Our Values

Despite our size, at Klean Komponents we pride ourselves on maintaining a family atmosphere with which the company began.  As such, we conduct our business using our own “KLEAN” principles:

• Kind – to each other, our customers, stakeholders and the environment.
• Lowering - emissions and pollutants above and beyond the levels set out by government.
• Economic – providing all our products at the lowest possible price to our customers whilst also paying all of our workers on every continent a generous salary.
• Autonomous – from R and D to packaging, we control every stage of our product production, meaning that our customers benefit from the knowledge we gain during development.
• New – our Innovation team is the best in the world, allowing us to provide our customers with the most up-to-date, and of course the cleanest, products and solutions.

Our aim is to find our customers the right product at the right price and it is by following these simple customer-focused guidelines that we have built a reputation for being the best in the industry.