Serbian President, Aleksandar Vucic officially inaugurated the new factory in Nis on Saturday, opened by the German company Leoni, the leading European manufacturer of car cables and cable systems.
This is the third Leoni’s factory in Serbia which will produce cable sets for BMW and employ 2,200 people. The investment is worth 22 million EUR, and the factory spans 22,000 square metres.
“The construction started only five months ago, and now, we have the first cable produced. To be perfectly honest, I did not expect everything to happen so fast. Leoni has turned into the leading employer in Serbia. They have another 5,700 people working for them in their factories in Prokuplje and Doljevac”, the Serbian president said at the official opening.
Currently, Leoni has 150 employees. “According to the agreement signed with the Serbian government, Leoni is obligated to create a total of 7,402 jobs in Serbia, but I think it’s going to be even more than that. Germany is fast becoming our biggest external trade partner, and the only country that our external trading with exceeds the value of 4 billion EUR”, Vucic added.
Overall, the German investors in Serbia employ over 35,000 people and that number has been growing day-on-day. Vucic is certain that Leoni is going to open its fourth factory in Serbia too. So far, the company has invested 75 million EUR here, and, once the number of its employees reaches 8,000, it is going to become the biggest employer in the production sector.
The Executive Vice President of Leoni, Ralf Maus is also confident that the company would expand its operations in Serbia.
“I cannot tell you how fast we are going to open new production facilities in Serbia, but based on our experiences here and your readiness to change things, I can promise you that we are going to come again. This year, Leoni plans to open four factories worldwide. In May, we opened our factory in Morocco, today we opened the one in Nis, in September we are going to open one in Ukraine, and in November in Mexico. This is the first time since the company was founded that we are opening four factories in the space of just one year”, Maus added.
(Vecernje Novosti, 29.07.2017)
http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/ekonomija/aktuelno.239.html:678097-U-Nisu-jos-2200-radnih-mesta
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