Volvo Plant near Kosice to Launch Trial Production Run after Summer

Valaliky, 22 May (TASR) - The construction of the new Volvo car plant near Kosice is proceeding in line with the schedule, Volvo Cars Kosice director Marc Gombeer told a news conference in Kosice on Friday. A trial production run will begin after this summer, with full-scale production planned for 2027. The plant currently has more than 600 employees. A further 70 employees are due to join in June, and the company plans to hire an additional 700 workers by the end of the year, said Gombeer. "All the set deadlines have been met. After the summer, we'll smoothly move to the trial production stage. This step will perfectly prepare us for the planned ramp-up of full production in 2027, thus fulfilling our original commitment," stated Gombeer, who confirmed that all preparatory and construction stages are going exactly according to plan. The plant in Valaliky is currently carrying out functional testing of its key operations. As part of functional tests of the press shop, body shop and megacasting facility, more than 100 complete car bodies have already been manufactured and sent to Sweden. As much as 36 percent of the volume of parts for each vehicle will come from suppliers based in Slovakia. Concerning recruitment, the company specified that English isn't a requirement for production operator posts, as training is conducted in Slovak. Slovaks currently make up 95 percent of the hired technicians and operators. At the same time, a new in-house training centre is now fully operational at the plant itself. ko/df