Swiss giant Nestlé to upgrade its Pet Food plant in Bük with a huge investment

The minister said that the Swiss-based food company will set up a new production unit and build two new automatic production lines at its site in Bük, where "it will be able to produce 500,000 tons of pet food a year from 2025, with 85 percent of these products being exported". 

The HUF 55 billion investment is expected to create 130 new jobs. Although the company will not receive government financial support, the state will provide the necessary infrastructure improvements, such as modernizing the road and water networks.

The project is an important part of Nestlé Hungária's overall five-year development period from 2020 to 2025, which will see investments worth a total of HUF 300 billion (EUR 771 million), creating around 600 new jobs, the politician stressed.

Péter Szijjártó noted that in today's uncertain times, reliable partnerships are becoming increasingly important, and this is how the cooperation between Hungary and Nestlé can be characterized, "as the company has made a major contribution to the economic development of Hungary over the past three decades". 

He said that the Swiss company, with 344 factories in 77 countries around the world, also makes sure that its employees are proficient in the latest technologies, and its training program for this purpose has been supported by the government with HUF 193 million (EUR 495,929).

The minister emphasized that the food industry is one of the most modern sectors, as competitiveness calls for continuous innovation in the face of increasingly stringent health, quality, and food safety requirements. Accordingly, the company has contributed not only to the quantitative growth of the Hungarian economy, but also to its qualitative development, as it has always brought state-of-the-art investments and continuously modernized its production.

He also pointed out that "the factory in Bük buys more than half of the raw materials it uses from domestic suppliers, thereby benefitting Hungarian small and medium-sized enterprises". 

Nestlé's Purina factory in Bük. Photo via Facebook/Nestlé.

Szijjártó stressed that the investment will further strengthen the domestic food industry, which has not only been able to maintain its operations despite the crisis, but has also consistently set new records.

He added that this is evidenced by the fact that the sector's production value was HUF 3,800 billion (EUR 9.7 billion) in 2020, compared to HUF 6,500 billion (EUR 16.7 billion) last year. He pointed out that over the past ten years, the sector has seen 72 major investments worth HUF 1,000 billion (EUR 2.5 billion).

Finally, he touched on Hungarian-Swiss economic relations, pointing out that 900 Swiss companies employ more than 30,000 people in Hungary. 'And bilateral relations have always been based on mutual respect, and there is no open issue of dispute in our relations,' he highlighted.

The Managing Director of Nestlé Hungária also spoke at the press conference. Péter Noszek underlined that this is the largest food industry investment in Hungary that will more than double the plant's production capacity from nearly 200,000 tons in 2019, to 500,000 tons from 2025.

Source: Hungary Today.