Volkswagen in Slovakia: new plant for €85 million

Volkswagen Group intends to expand its presence in Slovakia. German auto giant announced on June 8, 2011 its plans to build new plant in Slovakia. The new plant will specialize in manufacturing of car bodies. Cost of the new enterprise is estimated at 85 million euros.

In the official press release of the company is stated that the Slovak unit of the VW Slovakia holding has completed works on the first stage of building a new plant, which is located not far from Bratislava. In total at the plant will work about 100 people.

Volkswagen plans to begin building of the plant in the second half of 2011. It is expected that first products of the new plant will appear in 2013.

For the Slovak plant in Bratislava, which specializes in manufacturing such models as VW Touareg, Audi Q7 and Porsche Cayenne, 2010 was the year of recovering from the crisis. The company managed to increase production of cars to 144,500 items per year, which is by 36% more than in 2009.

Expansion of capacities of the Slovak plants is also caused by increased sales of the concern around the world. So, in the first quarter of 2011 the company recorded significant growth in sales of its cars in the U.S. market.

Besides the new plant in the nearest future Volkswagen in Slovakia will start production of the new model of small-capacity cars. For Volkswagen it will become a kind of turning into the "race", which was initiated by its main competitors in Slovakia - Korean Kia Motors and French PSA Peugeot Citroen. These companies, as well as Volkswagen, have their factories in Slovakia and have already managed to arrange production of the increasingly popular low-cost small-capacity cars.

Nearly all production of the Volkswagen plant is shipped for export. About 36% of the total volume is delivered to the German market, while 18.9% goes to China.