Soprod
Soprod is a Swiss manufacturer of watch movements and parts and is now owned by Citizen Holdings of Japan.
Overview
Soprod SA Les Reussilles was founded in 1966 in Tramelan in the Jura region of Switzerland to combine companies that produced mechanical watch components. A 1969 article specifically states that Soprod was a watchmaking holding company engaged in "Concentration of the means of production, purchases and sales."
The company was purchased by Léman Capital on April 21, 2005. The holding company already owned Swiss low-end quartz specialist, SFT Group, which was then the third-largest volume producer of quartz movements in the world along with its subsidiary Indtec, producing about 100,000 per year. Soprod and SFT were merged as a new company, STM Holding. The company had developed an in-house automatic movement by then, with about 2,000 per year in production, as a result of the 2002 announcement that ETA would no longer supply companies like Soprod with unfinished ebauches.
This group was purchased by Peace Mark of Hong Kong in 2007 but that company became insolvent the following year. STM was repurchased in 2008 by Festina management without the mass-market quartz manufacturing operations the company had established in China.
Today, Soprod is the corporate parent within Festina Group that produces Swiss watch components:
- Soprod mechanical movements in Tramelan/Les Reussilles
- Soprod high-end quartz movements and components in Sion
- Soprod wheel trains in Le Saignelégier
- IMM Ineltec milling and preforms in Maiche
- Manufacture Horlogère Vallée de Joux ("MHVJ", formerly Dubois Technique Horlogère) regulators in Le Sentier
- MSE/Astral Technologies hairsprings in Porrentruy
Soprod's main mechanical movement is the Soprod A-10, based on the Seiko 4L family. On this base, Soprod also produces a number of complications, including "big date", second time zone, power reserve indicator, 24 hour indicator, chronograph, moon phase, and more. Soprod also produces escapements and hairsprings for other manufacturers.