April 13 (SeeNews) - Sweden-based car safety equipment maker Autoliv said on Thursday it is planning to open an engineering center in Romania's eastern city of Iasi in the second half of the year.
Initially, the new engineering center will employ 100, but the company expects to increase the number of employees to 200 in three years, Autoliv said in a statement, without announcing the amount of the investment.
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The Iasi center will be an expansion of the one Autoliv already operates in Romania's western city of Timisoara, where the company employs over 450 engineers developing and testing automotive safety systems.
"The accelerated growth in the last two years in Timisoara will now be supported by a new center in Iasi, which will mainly develop and test Active Safety software products and Passive Safety systems. Iasi has a great potential for IT and automotive sectors. We knew we were going to find well-trained engineers and prestigious universities with very good record here,'' Autoliv Romania country manager, Ionel Fierbinteanu, said.
Autoliv opened its first factory in Romania in 1997 in the central county of Brasov.
The company now has production plants in Brasov, Lugoj, Sfantu Gheorghe, Resita and Onesti and two engineering centers, in Brasov and Timisoara, employing over 11,000 in Romania.
Autoliv was born in 1997 from the merger of the Swedish company Autoliv AB and Morton Automotive Safety Products, a division of U.S.-baswed firm Morton International. It is now present in 37 countries worldwide, employing over 70,000 people.
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