Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, has announced that Swiss-owned Nestlé Hungária is investing 55 billion forints (EUR 141.3m) to expand its pet food facility in Buk, in western Hungary, adding that the investment will create 130 jobs.
Minister Szijjártó said the new unit will contain two manufacturing lines, enabling the plant to double its production to 500,000 tonnes of Purina feed a year from 2025. Fully 85% of the product will be exported. Meanwhile, the government is supporting the investment by financing infrastructure development in the region, revamping roads and water-pipe networks in the area, he added. The project is part of Nestlé Hungária’s five-year development period between 2020 and 2025, when the company plans to invest a total of 300 billion forints, creating 600 jobs in the process, Szijjártó added. Noting that Nestlé operates 344 plants in 77 countries in the world, Szijjártó praised the company’s readiness to train its employees in using cutting-edge technology. Hungary’s government has supported such training programmes with a 193 million forint grant, he said. Since the plant purchases more than half of the raw materials used in production from local suppliers, local SMEs will also benefit from the investment, he added. It will also contribute to Hungary’s robust food industry “which has hit record after record despite all [recent] crises”, Szijjártó said. The sector’s production value went to 6,500 billion forints in 2023 from 3,800 billion in 2020, he said. In the past decade, the government has supported 72 large investments worth a total of 1,000 billion forints in the sector, he said.