LJUBLJANA (Slovenia), March 19 (SeeNews) – Slovenian household appliance manufacturer Gorenje [LJE:GRVG], owned by China's Hisense Group, said it plans to build two production plants - in Slovenia's Velenje and Serbia's Valjevo, in the next two years.
“In Velenje, a factory will be built for manufacturing Hisense brand TV sets, while Gorenje Valjevo will expand its production capacity and build additional manufacturing halls to become a centre for Hisense Group's refrigeration technology in Europe,” the company said in a statement on Monday.
The first stage of the construction of the TV set factory in Velenje is expected to be completed next autumn and initially manufacture some one million units per year. In the next stage, the company is planning to increase the output capacity to 4 million TV sets per by 2023.
The Velenje factory will create between 300 and 400 new jobs in the first stage, while in the second stage, the factory is expected to employ one thousand people.
“The investment is valued at several dozen million euro. TV appliances from our factory will be mostly intended for the European market,” Gorenje said.
Expansion of production is also planned at Gorenje Valjevo where the existing refrigeration appliance factory has 1,500 employees. Its output reached 672,000 units last year.
The company also said that in the future it intends to build an additional cold storage appliance factory that will employ up to 1,000 more employees and increase the output capacity by 750,000 units per year already in the first stage. “With the expansion, Gorenje Valjevo will become Hisense Group's centre for refrigeration technology in Europe,” the company noted.
Hisense holds a 95.42% stake in Gorenje thought its subsidiary Hisense Luxembourg Home Appliance Holding.