A new investment in the Croatian car industry.
The Zadar area will soon get a new factory of parts that will be installed into a new generation of vehicles. The leader of the project is Željko Uzelac, the owner of the Kotar Superior Consulting company, and his partners are suppliers and smaller manufacturers of car parts, reports Jutarnji List on 10 August 2017.
Some of his associates are a German subsidiary of the Belgian global company Wabco, and an Italian subsidiary of the French company Valeo. These are global automotive businesses that regularly supply producers such as Mercedes, Audi, BMW… These companies have hundreds of factories around the world, as well as research and development centres where new projects are constantly being developed and new products made according to demands of the end customers.
Željko Uzelac is known in the business circles as the founder, co-owner and long-time director of LTH Metalni Lijev from Benkovac, which made a significant step forward at the beginning of the century and became a very stable and prosperous manufacturing and export company.
Uzelac says that he has been in contact with partners ever since he retired as the CEO of LTH Metalni Lijev, a plant which produced elements for the auto industry. He points out that he has serious business partners, which is testified by the fact that they have so many factories around the world.
According to Uzelac, it will be a new green-field investment worth a total of 12 million euros. “Our partners work with a lot of companies and prepare development programmes for them. The building itself will cost about three million euros. We plan to have eight machines worth about seven million euros, employing about 20 workers. I have secured two locations where the plant could be built. One is in an industrial zone in Murvica, and the other is in Benkovac. The final decision on the site should be made this autumn, and then the operational realisation of the investment will begin. Everything should proceed very fast, so I expect production to start initially in the autumn of 2018, and more seriously by the beginning of 2019,” says Uzelac.
“The production plant will have an area of 3,000 square metres and will include latest and cutting edge technologies. These are machines that produce parts with 3D technology. That used to be just a dream, but now is something completely normal. In the new plant, we will also create moulds that our partners would use in their own facilities. We will also make parts for electric vehicles,” explains Uzelac.
“The organisation of production operations in the metal industry is my speciality and I have great experience. If you work rationally and listen to foreign business partners, then you will surely make a profit,” explains Uzelac.
However, he is worried about the lack of qualified workers in the metal industry. Still, he is confident that he will find a sufficient number of employees without significant problems. “Zadar still has a good technical high school which educates excellent metal workers,” says Uzelac.
Translated from Jutarnji List.
