The automotive industry is the backbone of the Hungarian economy, Péter Szíjjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said at the inauguration of a Japanese car battery plant in Miskolc, Hungary.
Japanese battery manufacturer GS Yuasa has built its battery assembly plant in the Miskolc industrial park with an investment of HUF 9 billion (EUR 26.8 million), to which the Hungarian government contributed a HUF 465.3 million non-refundable grant.
Rmx.news points out that GS Yuasa goes back to the early days of the 20th century when it won a contract to provide batteries for a backup of the then notoriously unreliable Kyoto power grid. It currently has 37 production facilities in 17 countries and some 15,000 employees.
Minister Szíjjártó said that the automotive industry employs 175,000 people in Hungary (out of a total workforce of 4.52 million) and many of these foreign-owned car plants bring cutting-edge automotive technologies to Hungary, such as German automaker Audi’s electric engine plant and now GS Yuasa’s new lithium battery plant which will supply batteries for electric cars.
Minister Szíjjártó added that Japan is the sixth largest foreign direct investor in Hungary, with 160 Japanese companies employing 34,000 people and a bilateral trade figure between the two countries of US$2.2 billion (EUR 2 billion). The largest single one of these is Magyar Suzuki, whose plant in Esztergom, northern Hungary assembled 175,000 cars last year.
Photo credit: e-cars.hu