2 Countries Remain in the Race for the New Volkswagen Plant in Eastern Europe

The new Volkswagen Factory in East Europe, which will produce Skoda cars, will have an annual capacity of 350,000 cars. This is clear from the statement of Chief Executive Officer of the Skoda subsidiary, Bernhard Meyer.

The German giant plans to move the Czech car production to a larger factory in the region of Bulgaria and neighboring countries. One reason is that the Czech brand has been recording strong sales for years and needs extra capacity. According to the plan, the new production should open at the end of 2022 or early 2023.

Meyer told German media that the choice of destination for the huge investment had been curbed from 4 options to 2. Here is the point to recall that Bulgaria is among the options for the German concern. Besides our country, Romania, Serbia and Turkey participate in the competition.

The new factory is expected to produce the Skoda Karoq and Seat Ateca SUVs, but "is not finally decided." It will have the magnitude of the previous one in the Czech city of Kvasini, where the two models are currently being produced. In their place in Czech production will be made other models of the company - such as the Volkswagen Passat, for example, which so far came from the German city of Emden.

Skoda - the more it produces, the more it sells

The investment move from which Bulgaria hopes to win is provoked by the capacity filling of the two factories in the Czech Republic - in Kvasiniy and Mlada Boleslav, who produce Skoda. According to Bernhard Meyer, the brand may lose sales this year because it does not reach its production capacity. In other words, orders are more than fast and efficient. Skoda could sell over 100,000 additional cars in 2018 if production capacity allowed it, says Meyer.