The company held by the Turkish Arcelik group conditions it on getting state aid of EUR37.5 million or 35% of the planned investment and intends to build the plant in Gaesti, Dambovita County (southern Romania), where it already owns a plot of land, ZF has found.
“Gaesti is the most convenient place for them to open a plant, logistics-wise,” market sources say.
The company called its shareholders for an extraordinary general meeting on February 15 to approve the project and the amount of investment.
Arctic will invest its profits from the last few years, including 2014, in the new plant, according to the data available. The company officials did not return ZF’s calls for comment on the project.
The state aid would not be its first, since Romania’s government contributed EUR10 million of the EUR21.9 million investment Arctic completed in 2013, in order to boost production capacity of the plant in Gaesti by about 25%.
The home appliances manufacturer makes only refrigerators and freezers in Romania. Its 2014 production stood at about 1.9 million refrigerators and it exported 1.6 million of them, according to ZF’s calculations based on the data supplied by the company. The 2014 data are the latest available.
The plant in Gaesti is the biggest in mainland Europe by production capacity (2.6 million units) and the second largest on the entire continent after Arcelik’s facility in Eskisehir.
Arctic’s investment in a washing machine plant is the first such investment in Romania in the last few years, as the plants in this country only make refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, espresso machines, cookers and oral hygiene products. Romania used to make Albalux washing machines once, but the brand no longer exists.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)