Spumotim builds plant in Arges county to be closer to Dacia

Timisoara-based Spumotim, a polyurethane foam producer, is set to hire at least 100 people in a new plant in Poiana Lacului locality of Arges county, a centre built close to Mioveni Dacia plant that will manufacture car seat foam for Duster and Logan. The company's representatives chose not to provide any information on the value of investments, but specified the centre was almost finished and production would start in August. "We plan to recruit people starting June, so that by August we should be able to start manufacturing operations. We will manufacture seat foam for Dacia at our Poiana Lacului factory every day. This year, most likely starting the second half, we will also begin production of polyurethane foam for the Ford plant of Romania, as well," Ioan Seiman, Spumotim general manager, told ZF Transilvania. Thus, the Timisoara producer is trying to rapidly offset the production gap caused the loss of the contract with Salomon sportswear producer of France, which decided to move Romanian production to Ukraine to slash costs. Spumotim in 2009 invested around 2.5m euros in retooling and plans to invest further this year, earmarking around 1.5m euros to acquire new installations.