October 5 (SeeNews) - Bulgarian sanitaryware manufacturer Ideal Standard-Vidima on Thursday opened a new workshop for the production of polymer molds at its manufacturing site in Sevlievo, in the north of the country, after an investment of 2 million levs ($1.07 million/1.02 million euro), the company said.
The new facility, which features the latest in the company's set of 32 industrial robots, has the potential to become a manufacturing hub for all sanitary ceramics plants, Ideal Standard-Vidima said in a statement published on its website.
Last month, German ceramic products manufacturer Villeroy & Boch agreed to acquire operating companies in the Ideal Standard group from Anchorage Capital Group and CVC Credit at an overall valuation of 600 million euro ($631.1 million).
According to Jan Peter Tewes, CEO of Belgium-based company Ideal Standard International, which is part of the deal, the Bulgarian factory, with its output capacity of 2.5 million sanitaryware products, will remain a crucial part in the development of the expanded business.
As much as 25% of the Bulgarian site's output is now made using high pressure casting machines, so it was only natural that the company decided to make the polymer molds for these machines, according to Ideal Standard-Vidima managing director Valentin Ganev. He added that this is the next step in the development of the factory which has just marked its 25th year of operations on the Bulgarian market.
Ideal Standard has representative offices in Romania and Serbia. Elsewhere in Southeast Europe, the group also operates in Croatia, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Greece and Turkey.
In 2021, Villeroy & Boch terminated negotiations initiated a year earlier on the potential acquisition of Ideal Standard International.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)