October 4 (SeeNews) - Slovenia and Magna International Inc. are set to sign on October 17 a contract awarding 18.61 million euro ($21.9 million) in state incentives to the Canada-based company which plans to build a paint factory in Hoce–Slivnica municipality, local media reported.
The information was comminicated to Slovenian news agency STA by the country's economy minister Zdravko Pocivalsek on Tuesday.
In August, Magna offered to build a railway track to the paint shop it is planning to establish in Slovenia to address environmental concerns voiced by local NGOs.
"In our current business plans, transport will be done by trucks, but we are aware that transport by rail potentially is an environmentally more friendly form of transport", Magna said in a letter to Slovenia's economy ministry at the time.
Earlier in August, Slovenian media reported that Magna International could abandon its decision to build a paint shop in Slovenia and could relocate the project to Hungary where it had already obtained a building permit. STA said back then that as Slovenian NGOs prepared to lodge an appeal against a decision to grant Magna an environmental permit to build the facility, the automotive group was eying Hungary as an alternative location.
In January, Magna International said it will invest into a new paint shop in Slovenia to help support new programmes going into its contract vehicle assembly facility in the Austrian city of Graz, located close to the border of Slovenia. The new facility will open 400 jobs.
Canada-based Magna International runs some 309 manufacturing operations and 99 product development, engineering and sales centres in 29 countries. In Serbia, it operates Magna Seating, which makes seating systems for Renault, Ford and Smart.
($=0.850385 euro)