Nestlé has invested HUF 20 billion in expanding its pet food manufacturing factory in Bük, Hungary, over the past seven years.
The Swiss company’s pet food subsidiary Nestlé Purina employs 900 people, and its newest, 5,000 square-metre manufacturing hall in Hungary makes it one of the largest pet manufacturing plants in Europe, it says.
The new hall is fully automated and processes local agricultural produce into approximately one million products every day. It also houses two new filling packaging lines that were inaugurated in Bük by Mihály Varga, the Hungarian Minister of National Economy, last Friday (10 November).
According to the company, Varga spoke highly of the commitment of Nestlé Hungária to Hungary. Such commitment is, Varga said, reflected in the development projects completed there and also in the appreciation by the company’s management of the skills, the creativity and the devotion to work with Hungarian employees.
This new manufacturing unit is a step forward in more than one respects, the Minister of National Economy added, because it strengthens the economic ties between Switzerland and Hungary, brings stability and new opportunities to the almost 2,000 domestic suppliers of the company, and also plays a significant role in the development of County Vas, on the western border of the country.
Hungarian Produce
“60 per cent of the agricultural produce used in our Bük factory – more than 78,000 tons - comes from Hungarian producers”, Kai Herzke, the director of the Nestlé Purina plant in Bük said.
The company reports having exported pet food worth more than HUF 380 billion from Bük since 2006.
Due to its three regional production centres in the country, the volume of goods exported by Nestlé Hungária exceeds the company’s imports by a factor of fifteen, it says.
“Thanks to the extension projects of the Bük plant the number of Bük-based employees has tripled in the past 10 years,” Kai Herzke, the Bük factory manager added.
Major Player
Nestlé is the largest Swiss employer in Hungary, with a total of 2400 employees working at the Budapest headquarters and in the manufacturing plants in Bük, Diósgyőr and Szerencs.
At the beginning of October, Nestlé Purina also announced the launch of a new food factory in the US, located in Hartwell Georgia, with an investment of CHF 310 million ($320 million) planned from now until 2023.
© 2017 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Kevin Duggan. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
