Adidas promised to rollout its German ‘Speedfactory’ concept further and now it’s planning to do just that. The sports giant said yesterday that it will open a robot-staffed manufacturing plant in the US next year.

Manufacturing footwear only, the current German Speedfactory is about to move into full-scale commercial production.

There’s no news on where the US plant will be (one person at the press conference suggested Portland, Oregon, which is the home of major rival Nike).

But Adidas spokeswoman Katje Schreiber did say that the current German and future US Speedfactories will employ 160 people each, mainly engineers. And they’ll each produce around 1m pairs of shoes annually.

Adidas as a whole currently produces around 300m pairs of shoes a year, most of them made in giant factories in locations like Vietnam.

By bringing production closer to the markets where the shoes are being sold, Adidas expects to shorten the time they take to reach the consumer by months.