Foreign minister: South Korea brings biggest greenfield investment in Hungary’s history
South Korean company SK Innovation is bringing to Hungary a new 2.3 billion US dollar battery plant in what will be the country’s biggest ever greenfield investment, Péter Szijjártó, the foreign minister, said on Friday.
The development in Fejér County, in central Hungary, will create 2,500 jobs, the minister of foreign affairs and trade, said, adding that SK Innovation is South Korea’s largest energy and chemicals company and one of the world’s leading battery manufacturers.
The company’s first two overseas plants are located in Komárom, in northern Hungary, and its third European plant producing batteries for electric cars will also be located in Hungary, he said.
The government is providing financial support, and this agreement is in the process of being finalised, he said, adding the amount would be the largest single government grant in Hungarian investment history.
Construction of the 700,000sqm plant is scheduled to begin in the third quarter of the year, Szijjártó said, adding that the government has already approved a large-scale regional transport and electricity infrastructure development project serving the plant.
The foreign minister called the investment “a fantastic success” at a time of enormous health and economic challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic. He said Hungary had to work “much harder to get the SK Innovation investment amid extremely keen competition” which, he added, together with other Asian investors, had turned the country into “a frontrunner in electric battery production in Europe”.
Szijjártó said that 32 major South Korean companies have made investments in Hungary over the past six years, adding that bilateral trade turnover had increased by 28 percent last year.
Kim Jun, SK Innovation’s president-CEO, said in a video message that the company’s board decided to build the Ivancsa plant, the largest in Europe, with annual capacity of 30 GWh, at a meeting on Jan. 28. He called the site’s location “optimal” in terms of logistics and labour.
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Source: MTI
1 Comment
The German Government is probably FUMING at the decision by ‘SK INNOVATION’ to build a THIRD overseas plant in Hungary for the production of electric vehicle batteries.
Wait a moment – lots of GERMAN companies have recently made similar investments !
Perhaps these decisions were motivated by the EXTREMELY LOW business tax rate in Hungary, combined with a ready supply of educated, highly-skilled and motivated Hungarian workers.
It definitely is better than paying OBSCENELY-HIGH tax rates in Germany (a large amount of which would DEFINITELY be used for the ‘maintenance’ of uneducated / unskilled Muslim migrants – and their families – to remain in that country) whilst still NOT being able to obtain the ‘right’ workers !