SOFIA (Bulgaria), January 23 (SeeNews) – Bulgarian fuel station maker Promodul will expand its activities and will invest between 2.5 million levs ($1.5 million/1.3 million euro) and 3 million levs in a plant for conservation of fruit and vegetables in the city of Pavlikeni, the company's owner and manager said on Friday.
The company will renovate an existing non-operational plant and will start processing, storing, canning and freezing fruit and vegetables, Ivan Ivanov told SeeNews over the phone.
“[The investment] can be even bigger as I have not calculated the technological process and how much equipment I will need,“ he said, adding that there are some details that need to be taken into account before calculating the overall investment in the new plant.
The core activities of the company are the production and equipment of gas stations.
Ivanov said he bought the 1.35 ha property on which the plant lies, and which was used in the past for fruit and vegetables conservation, and decided to use it for the same purpose. The plant itself takes up an area of about 3,000 sq m.
“[I Intend to use] my own funds and [funds from] banks, with which I work, and to apply [for financing] under European projects,” Ivanov noted.
According to the owner, reconstruction works on the building have been completed, but the plant is not expected to start operating within the next year because the project is still at the draft phase and a lot more needs to be done.
The total capacity of the plant has not been determined yet, but expectations are that it would be about 2 tonnes of canned fruits and vegetable per day.
“The capacity is a little difficult for me [to determine], as I am in the process of defining the technology itself and I have to consider the property that we have, since production is more specific in terms of freezing – we need refrigerators and so on,” Promodul's owner and manager noted.
The plant is expected to create about 25 jobs.
Promodul asked earlier this year the Pavlikeni municipality for an assessment on whether the project needs an environmental impact assessment (EIA), data published on the municipality's website indicated. The document showed that the company intends to design a plan for the project and launch construction works in 2015 while within a period of 24 months the plant should be operational.
Promodul, based in Pavlikeni, was set up in March 2012. It is 100%-owned by Ivanov.
Pavlikeni, part of the Veliko Tarnovo area, is located in Northern Bulgaria.
The company posted a profit of 178,000 levs in 2013, up by 5.3% compared to the previous year. Its net sales grew by an annual 50.6% to 839,000 levs in 2013.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)