December 20 (SeeNews) - Serbian state-run ammunition manufacturer Prvi Partizan plans to start the construction of a testing and packaging unit near its factory in Uzice, western Serbia, by the beginning of March 2017 and to launch it in the middle of the following year, local media reported.
The company plans to invest 12 million euro ($12.4 million) in the construction of the new facility, the managing director of Prvi Partizan, Dobrosav Andric, said in a video recording posted on the website of Tanjug news agency on Monday.
Prvi Partizan will build the new unit on a land plot of 75 hectares in the village of Bela Zemlja, located 9 km from Uzice, and will carry out there all dangerous works related to the testing and packaging of ammunition, Andric said.
In this way, the dangerous activities related to the production of ammunition will be located outside of the factory in the centre of Uzice, where the company is headquartered, he added.
In January 2015, Serbian media reported that Prvi Partizan was hoping to get an 8 million euro soft loan from a government development fund for the construction of an ammunition production facility. The total project cost was estimated at 12 million euro. Back then, the company explained that it planned to contribute the remaining 4 million euro from its own funds.
The construction of the ammunition testing and packaging unit is part of a 30 million euro investment project aimed to help Prvi Partizan boost its annual exports to $120 million from $75 million in 2014. Under the first phase of the project, Prvi Partizan built a unit for the production of ball bearings and casings.
Prvi Partizan expects to book a record-high profit of 12 million euro and to produce a total of 260 million rounds of ammunition in 2016, Tanjug reported.
The company produces ammunition for over 400 types of rifles, pistols and small arms. Its factory has a staff of some 1,000.
($ = 0.964679 euro)