BMW has begun construction of its EUR 1 billion new production plant in Debrecen, Eastern Hungary.
“This is the end of 100 years of solitude,” said László Palkovics, Minister for Innovation and Technology, referring to the fact the region hasn’t seen an investment of this magnitude in the past century.
According to Rmx.news, the central budget will contribute HUF 130 billion (EUR 390 million) to putting the necessary infrastructure in place and a further HUF 35 billion on developing local education to ensure continued workforce supply.
The greenfield investment will bring state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment to Debrecen, a city some 230 kilometers east of Budapest, and the production line will have a capacity of 150,000 units per year. BMW said earlier that the decision to build the new plant in Debrecen was based on the city’s good infrastructure and logistics base, as well as the already present network of BMW suppliers.
The plant will bring the number of BMW production sites to 31, but will be the first new one within the European Union in the past two decades.
BMW is the fifth global car maker to build a production facility in Hungary. Daimler AG, the PSA Group, Suzuki and Volkswagen AG’s Audi brand all have plants in Hungary. Last year the automotive sector accounted for almost 27 percent of the country’s industrial output with a production value of over 8 trillion forints and a production volume of 472,000 units.
Photo credit: Origo