Volvo will open a new manufacturing plant in Slovakia – its first new facility in Europe for nearly 60 years – to help increase production of future electric cars.
The new plant will be located in Kosice in the east of the country, and will be the Swedish firm’s third plant in Europe, joining Torslanda in Sweden and Ghent in Belgium. But it will be the first to be designed and built from the ground-up for battery electric car production.
Construction on the £1.04 billion plant is due to begin next year, with series production of “next-generation, pure electric Volvo cars” due to start their in 2026. Volvo says the plant will also be climate neutral, and will have a capacity of up to 250,000 cars per year.
Volvo boss Jim Rowan said that “expansion in Europe, our largest sales region, is crucial to our shift to electrification and continued growth.”
Rowan denied to say which models would be built at the plant, other than affirming that only battery electric cars would be produced there.
Volvo also has manufacturing plants in the USA and China. Rowan said that the new plant give the firm “the capacity we need for now”, and also hinted that the plant would likely house a model focused on the European market.
“We’ve had the strategy for some time to build where you sell and source where you build, and this move gives us supply chain capacity,” said Rowan. “We have manufacturing facilities in Asia, we have manufacturing facilities in North America and we have manufacturing facilities in Europe. We’re seeing Europe grow very quickly for us on the BEV side, and this investment will help us meet that.
The plant will create several thousand new jobs in Slovakia, and Volvo said that incentives offered by the country’s government were a key factor in the decision to site the facility there.
Volvo’s two current European manufacturing sites in Torslanda and Ghent date from 1964 and 1965 respectively, and have a combined capacity of 600,000 machines per year.
The current Volvo XC40 Recharge and Volvo C40 Recharge are both built in Ghent.
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