EC Grants Incentives for INA Kysucke Expansion

EC Grants Incentives for INA Kysucke Expansion The European Commission announced today it has approved Euro 30 million in investment aid and incentives to INA Kysucke (INA; a division of Schaeffler Holding, Germany), as INA continues to aggressively expand bearing manufacturing in the Slovak Republic. Manufacturing expansion there has been unrelenting since INA's Nove Mesto facility first came online in 2000. This latest growth spurt, the company's fourth, is reportedly worth at least Euro 140 million. By early 2005, INA was already confident enough to begin outlining plans for the next several years. Making today's award, the European Commission said: The European Commission has authorised, under the EC Treaty's state aid rules investment aid in the form of tax relief worth Euro 30 million for INA Kysuce for the extension of an existing plant producing ball bearings in Kysucke Nove Mesto, Central Slovakia. The total costs of this new investment amount to approximately Euro140 million. Neelie Kroes, EC Competition Commissioner, said: "I am pleased to be able to authorize aid for the investment project by INA Kysuce, which will provide a significant contribution to regional development and job creation in the Slovak Republic." The EC said it believes the project will create at least 1,280 new jobs, in addition to the 2,300 jobs INA has already brought to the area. INA needed to acquire adjoining property in order to complete the project, a process made easier with the Slovak government interceded, "in the public interest," to stop land speculators. When this phase is complete, INA said it believes yearly production value from the Slovak Republic will exceed INA said it believes yearly production value from the Slovak Republic will exceed Euro 244 million. The Nove Mesto facilities are geared to producing highly price-sensitive automotive sizes and standard industrial bearings. Shifting production to the Slovak Republic from higher cost plants has allowed INA to stay competitive with those items on the world market; essentially all of the bearings produced there are exported to OEM customers worldwide. Other bearing manufacturers are also operating nearby in Nove Mesto; Kinex-KLF is a major producer of radial single row deep groove ball and cylindrical roller bearings, and an NN rolling element plant is also there, which NN acquired from Kinex in 2003.