A Swedish-Swiss concern for the manufacture of electrification products and industrial automation continues developing its business in Bulgaria and opened a new factory in the town of Petrich (Southwest Bulgaria). The company opened its second factory in this Bulgarian town. The new production facility is expected to create 420 new job positions by the end of 2020. Thus, the total number of the employees of the foreign company in Petrich will amount to 720. The company has production facilities in the town of Rakovski, Sevlievo and Varna as well and a research and development center in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia. Bulgaria’s Premier Boyko Borissov, this country’s Minister of Finance Vladislav Goranov and the Mayor of Petrich Dimitar Brachkov were official guests of the opening.

This is a relatively big investment for our company. This green-field investment amounts to nearly EUR 3.5 million. The activities in the new plant are linked with welding, pre-assembly and tests, one of the Executive Directors of the company Oliver Iltisberger says and adds: We decided to expand our production capacity, because we have a wonderful and highly-qualified team. This allows us to organize timely delivery of products to all parts of Europe and maintain their extremely high quality that our clients expect from us. It is very encouraging to see that the company continues to invest in its capacity to deliver safe and sustainable products in Bulgaria and on other markets.

Finding highly-qualified personnel for the Bulgarian factories is not an easy job, Marcel van der Hoek, Executive Director of this company for Bulgaria said and added:

In some regions such as in Sofia and Plovdiv, where the number of companies and investors is high, it is more difficult to find the suitable people as compared to towns like Sevlievo and Petrich. We attract people with our good social programme and career opportunities. We are working together with the German-Bulgarian Chamber of Industry and Commerce under a programme for dual education. Besides, we organize training courses for our employees and the teams have an opportunity to attend trainings in Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

In a special interview for Radio Bulgaria Mr Hoek described the business climate in this country as stable and mentioned some of the advantages the potential foreign investors can use in Bulgaria.

We made our first investments in 1994-1996, but in the past 10 years we built entirely new factories. The stability of the Bulgarian national currency and the fact that we can hire highly-qualified staff is what helps us in our business here. Besides, taxes are among the lowest in the whole EU. From our point of view, people are the most important asset, because the low tax is not enough incentive when we decide where to invest. For us Bulgaria is a very important country, because we export produce to all Europe from our Bulgarian factories and we have built a very good reputation with the qualities and the skills of our employees.

Marcel van der Hoek arrived in Bulgaria for the first time in 2005 and lived in this country for six years. In 2018 he came to Bulgaria again and thinks that many positive changes occurred in this country. Mr Hoek is impressed with the road traffic in Bulgaria and says with a smile on his face that the drivers in this county stop at pedestrian paths much more often than in Germany.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov