September 7 (SeeNews) - Tobacco company Philip Morris International (PMI) will invest a further $130 million (121.2 million euro) in its factory in Romania’s southern city of Otopeni, where it has already invested some $600 million, prime minister Nicolae Ciolacu said.
“[…] the fact that 90% of your production is currently exported can only make me happy as a prime minister, because we are balancing Romania’s trade gap,” Ciolacu said, as seen in a live broadcast of a press conference following an event marking the 30th anniversary of Philip Morris’s presence in Romania on Tuesday.
The investment will add new production lines to the Otopeni facility, accelerating Romania's transition to a smokeless future, private broadcaster Digi24 reported on Tuesday, quoting Mircea Scaunasu, managing director at Philip Morris Romania.
The Otopeni factory was completed in 2000, seven years after PMI opened its first office in Bucharest.
In July 2017, PMI announced plans to convert its cigarette factory near Bucharest into a manufacturing facility for high-tech smoke-free products. Four months later, the plant started production of HEETS, the tobacco units used with the electronic tobacco heating device IQOS, according to a press release issued by PMI at the time.
Elsewhere in Southeast Europe, PMI will invest 100 million euro in a new facility in Serbia’s southern city of Nis, the government said on Wednesday.
The investment will enable the factory in Nis, which now makes only It traditional cigarettes, to produce a new line of smokeless tobacco products, which will be intended for export. PMI plans to employ 200 workers at the new facility.
($=0.932 euro)