KALUGA, September 5, (RIA Novosti). - The official ceremony of laying a foundation stone of a Samsung Electronics plant took place in the Vorsino Industrial Park in the Kaluga Region, the RIA Novosti correspondent reports.
The agreement on the plant's construction was reached at the 11th International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg this year. It will be the company's first production facility built on the Russian soil.
Preliminarily estimates for the investment in the project stand at 3.5 billion rubles, said Don Joo Lee, president of Samsung Electronics Headquarters in the CIS and Baltic States. The plant will come on stream in November 2008 and reach its full projected capacity in 2010, producing about 2.2 million plasma and LCD TV-sets a year. In the longer run, the facility will also make electronic household appliances. The Vorsino plant will employ 2,600 people, 50 of them foreign professionals.
Don Joo Lee said the company hopes to gain a 25%-30% share of the electronics market in the next three years.
"This region has a good research potential, and highly qualified professionals. It is well known to, and respected by major foreign companies, such as Volvo, Volkswagen and Samsung. The latter will be offered a preferential treatment in Kaluga," Anatoly Artamonov, Kaluga Governor, said at the groundbreaking ceremony.
The Vorsino Industrial Park is a 1,000-hectare area 70 kilometers from Moscow, on the border with the Kaluga Region. It was created to house modern production facilities on specially prepared sites with ready-to-use engineering infrastructure. A Nestle Purina PetCare plant has just been completed in the area. There are plans to build an electrometallurgical plant, a furniture factory, a logistics center, a flat glass plant and a food packaging manufacturing facility there.
The Kaluga Region has another industrial park, Grabtsevo, where a Volkswagen plant is under construction now.
