Automotive components supplier Coroplast Fritz Müller GmbH & Co. KG plans to launch a new 10 million euro ($10.7 million) production plant in southeastern Moldova.
The cables, wiring and industrial adhesive tapes specialist based in Wuppertal, Germany, is starting to construct its new electrical cables and injection molded parts operation in the city of Căuşeni this spring.
The firm established a subsidiary in Moldova in December, which is building an 8,500-square-meter production hall at the heart of its new site in the Căuşeni sub zone of the Balti Free Economic Zone, south of the Moldovan capital Chisinau.
Coroplast expects to launch the plant in 2017 and will employ between 400 and 600 workers by the end of the year, confirmed the Moldovan authorities. The company has plans to employ a 1,500-strong workforce within several years.
Coroplast intends to serve Moldova's dynamic and growing automotive industry which currently employs more than 7,000, as well as exporting its products to other Eastern European states.
The German firm, which also manufactures cable assemblies and a range of self adhesive industrial tapes, not only supplies the automotive sector but also provides cable solutions for lighting, medical devices and measuring and control products.
Coroplast, originally formed back in 1928, took the decision to site its latest plant in Moldova after top level talks with the CIS country's government including prime minister Pavel Filip.
The German company is understood to have taken account of promising Eastern European market analysis and the business regulations in Moldova.
Coroplast is already operating a plant at Dylaki in southwestern Poland, which it opened in 2014. This coincided with the firm's plan to cease production of cable harnesses at its original leased unit, a former towel weaving mill, at Prudnik in the south of the country where it once employed 300.
The German company has other tapes and cable plants in Germany, Tunisia, China, Mexico and the United States.