June 2 (SeeNews) - German automotive supplier Eberspaecher said it is setting up a subsidiary in Bulgaria and will build a factory for electrical heaters for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid models in the country's fifth-largest city Ruse on the Danube river.
The plant, to be completed by the late summer of 2023, will enable Eberspaecher to meet demand for EV parts on the European market which is seen to rise sharply in the medium-term, the family-owned company said in a statement on Wednesday.
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The facility will be located on an area of some 80,000 square metres in Ruse’s Industrial Zone Slatina and will produce both low-voltage and high-voltage heaters as well as electronic control units. Eberspaecher Bulgaria will start production in a temporary location as early as January 2023.
"Newly won orders with start of production in the next years and a strong increase in demand for electrical heaters have driven the expansion of our production capacities," Joerg Schernikau, COO of climate controls systems and automotive controls at Eberspaecher, said in the statement.
The availability of good transport connections, with close proximity to Romania, and skilled technical staff motivated the choice of location.
The company will initially employ about 150 staff at the site, with plans to increase headcount to 500 in the coming years.
Eberspaecher's electrical heaters unit started operations in Germany in the late 1990s, later expanding to China and Poland. The core technology of the heaters, the PTC ceramics, has been produced in Hermsdorf, Germany, since 2016 while the group's automotive electronics unit has produced the electronic control units in Germany, since 2001 and in China since 2019.
Eberspaecher has some 10,000 employees at 80 locations worldwide and booked total revenue of over 4.9 billion euro ($5.2 billion) in 2020.
($ = 0.9384 euro)