Household appliance producer Arctic recently opened a new production line at its plant in the Romanian city of Gaesti, southern Romania, following EUR 23.9 million investments, the company has announced.

From the total amount, EUR 13.7 million represented Arctic’s contribution, while the rest of 10.2 million came from the Romanian Government, as state aid.

Following this investment, the company expanded the plant’s production capacity by a quarter.

“We intend to create 572 new jobs in the next five years through this project. We already created 195 jobs,” said Levent Çakıroğlu, CEO of Arcelik Group, which owns Arctic.

Arctic ended the first nine months of the year with a turnover of EUR 222 million, up 10 percent year-on-year, over 85 percent of its business coming from sale of products manufactured at the plant in Gaesti.

The plant’s  production increased by 15 percent between January-September 2013, compared to the same period last year, to 1.4 million units. Over 70 different products are manufactured at the company’s plant in Gaesti, Romania.

The refrigerators produced in the Romanian city of Gaesti are exported in Turkey, Poland, Spain, France, Germany and South Africa.

Arctic, part of Turkish group Arcelik, has a market share of 36 percent, the exports representing 85 percent of its total sales. The company currently has a total of 2,500 employees.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com