THE TOWN of Tornaľa in central Slovakia's Banská Bystrica region is preparing to welcome a new batch of investors in the near future, Mayor Ladislav Dubovský announced on January 15.
Some 70 people are to be employed by the Italian textile firm Airflight, which is due to open a plant in Tornaľa in the next few weeks. "Airflight decided to open an operation in Tornaľa due to the good experience it had with our people working at its plant in the Hungarian town of Putnok," Dubovský said.
Around 400 people from Tornaľa and its environs have found work in the neighbouring Hungarian town just over the border.
The Tornaľa town council is also due to sign a contract in the coming days with an unnamed Hungarian-Russian-Slovak-Polish investor, which intends to build a plant for producing alternative heating resources. Shortly after this the town will finalise a contract with a Belgian investor that specialises in mechanical engineering.
According to Dubovský, the investors were attracted to Tornaľa partly by the completion of an 11.5-km highway bypass of the town, which improved local connections to both the east and west of Slovakia and with the nearest Hungarian border crossing at Kral.
The textile firm Ozeta Neo is currently the largest single employer in Tornaľa, with 685 workers, followed by the engineering company Unicor-ESK with 120 employees.
