Nestlé Hungária plans to hire 250 people to work at the 10,000-square-meter plant in the village of Bük, located about 5km from Hungary’s border with Austria, the paper said.
The plant, which will serve as the regional production base for Nestlé’s United States-based pet-food division Nestlé Purina PetCare, will export most of its production to other countries in the Central and East European region.
The other, old Nestlé plant at Bük is producing more than 100,000 tons of pet food annually with 360 employees. Nestlé started at Bük in 1998 by buying a local pet food producer together with its trademarks.
Hungary’s pet food industry is mostly made up of Mars, Nestlé and Provimi’s Pet Hungária, and with exports of €269.3 million in 2009 Hungary was the seventh-largest pet-food exporter in the world with 4.5% of global markets. Total production increased to 413,000 tons last year from 399,000 in 2009.