INTERVIEW: Bulgaria's Rollplast building 4 MWp solar-plus-battery system

The project, which is part of a 12 million levs ($6.7 million/6.1 million euro) investment, will cover around half of the energy needs for production, with excess electricity to be sold back to the grid, Deyanski told SeeNews in a telephone interview.

Part of the equipment for the PV system has already been delivered. The solar panels have a capacity of 0.4 kW each. The project will be completed in two stages, with the first 2.5 MWp array to be switched on around April. The remaining installation of 1.5 MWp will go live by the start of 2024, Deyanski said.

The company's plans also include spending 5.5 million levs on state-of-the-art equipment, including 2 million levs on a new centre for producing aluminium profiles for doors and windows, according to Deyanski.

"This is the main focus of the equipment upgrade and we expect the project to increase by 50% our production capacity, along with boosting process automation and significantly improving product quality, something on which we have been working recently," Deyanski noted.

Rollplast built its production base in Kostinbrod, near the Serbian border, in 2008 and last year invested 18.2 million levs in its expansion. The company exports between 35% and 40% of its production to main markets Serbia, North Macedonia, Greece, Austria and Germany as well as other countries in Western Europe and North Africa.

The Bulgarian group increased its sales by an annual 15% to some 10 million levs in 2021, with net profit more than doubling to 569,000 levs, its most recent annual report shows.

(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)