BRITISH company AWS continues to extend investments and production in northwestern town of Námestovo, the Orava region.
“When the British company acquired us in 2007, we had 20 employees,” Ján Firic, AWS Slovakia site manager told the Hospodárske Noviny economic daily in mid-July.
The electro-technical plant currently employs 150 people with the plan to increase this number to 200 by the end of 2014. AWS, one of Europe’s leading specialist contract electronics manufacturers, is increasing investment and expanding facilities in Slovakia to meet customer demand.
“We recognise that many of our customers are under pressure to regularly review pricing structures in order to remain competitive in today’s fast-moving and challenging business environment,” Paul Deehan, AWS Group CEO, said as cited by daily. “We have been able to alleviate some of this pressure through offering low-cost manufacturing in Slovakia. Having proved our ability to deliver high-quality products from our offshore facility, many of our customers have moved to a strategy of lower cost manufacturing in CEE.”
The move of customers from the UK to Slovakia should elevate the turnover of the Slovak plant by 30 percent. Among the Slovak plant’s customers are companies from the aerospace and health sectors.
“Currently we are negotiating over a new hall 1,000 square metres large, which may be added by the end of 2014,” said Firic, adding that some production lines have moved to Námestovo.
AWS is interested in strengthening of its position in Slovakia. For now its Slovak site produces about one-fifth of the group’s turnover while this should increase to as much as one-half.
