BELGRADE (Serbia), August 13 (SeeNews) – Turkish car parts manufacturer Teklas plans to open a factory in Vranje, its second in Serbia, a senior company official told SeeNews in a recent interview.The company initially aims to employ 250 people in Vranje and increase the headcount to 1,500 in the following years, Gulsunay Uysal Kaba, Teklas global human resources director and member of the executive committee, told SeeNews in an interview via email earlier this week.Teklas aims to reach 2,500 employees in Serbia in the next eight years, Uysal Kaba said.The new factory will specialise in the same line of business as the company’s plant in Serbia’s Vladicin Han, which is producing cooling and heating, electric and hybrid engine, and brake hose lines, Uysal Kaba also said.The Vladicin Han plant manufactures parts for Volkswagen, Audi, PSA, Porsche and other automotive companies. Its entire output is exported. The factory, which opened in 2015, has over 1,000 employees and spans about 26,000 sq m.Worldwide, Teklas has 11 production facilities in six countries, employing a total of 6,500.The company opened two factories during the pandemic – one in Bulgaria’s Vratsa, in the northwest of the country, and another one in the US, Uysal Kaba said. The plant in Vratsa is its third in Bulgaria, alongside plants in Kardzhali and Krumovgrad.Last month, Bulgaria’s economy ministry said the company will invest 10 million levs ($6 million/5.1 million euro) in production expansion and the construction of an automated warehouse for storage of finished products in Vratsa, creating 30 jobs.Teklas is working on introducing automation to all of its facilities, Uysal Kaba also said.”At Teklas, we are moving rapidly towards spreading our robotic automation applications to all of our facilities. In the long term, our goal is to increase our robot density, which is about 350, to 1,000,” she added.In the new factory in Vranje, Teklas plans to invest in solar energy production.”We will structure our Vranje investment as a green and smart factory,” the official noted. “In the future, tailor-made vehicles will become widespread, and most importantly, sustainable production will stand out because both resources and nature are disappearing. And now there’s a generation that’s aware of it.”
https://seenews.com/news/interview-turkeys-teklas-to-open-second-factory-in-serbia-750799
