“Hunent Zrt is building a new waterfowl processing plant in the Bács-Kiskun County town of Mélykút with an investment of some 12.5 billion forints (40 million euros) and the creation of 350 new jobs”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó announced.

“The Government is providing 4.4 billion forints (EUR 12M) towards the state-of-the-art greenfield investment project”, he added.

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According to Mr. Szijjártó, the international food market is also becoming increasingly competitive, and Hungary’s size means that maintaining its international competitiveness requires the realisation of a well-focussed strategy that concentrates on premium quality products.

“This investment will also contribute to enabling the Hungarian food industry to remain on a growth trajectory, without which the sector’s competitiveness would fall and others would take over the markets it has already gained”, he pointed out. “Similarly to the automotive industry, there is also a technological race going on within the food industry and continuous development is required to maintain competitiveness”, the Minister highlighted.

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Chairman of the Board of Hunent István Kiss told reporters that the company was establishing a plant that was unique in Europe in view of the fact that very few duck slaughterhouses and processing plants exist with such a high capacity and level of technological development. The first phase scheduled to finish in December 2018 will include, amongst others, the construction of the new slaughterhouse hall with a live animal receiving hall, a biological wastewater purifier and a large storage capacity automated cold storage unit”, he explained.

“The investment is expected to increase annual turnover to in excess of 20 billion forints (EUR 65M), meaning the company will become market leader not only in Hungary, but also in the major international markets”, he continued.

According to Mr. Kiss, closed live animal production capacities must be increased to prevent the spread of bird flu, on which the company will be placing major emphasis. The company head told reporters that ducks represent the company’s main profile, but that it also deals in geese. 80 percent of the company’s turnover are derived from exports, especially to Germany, but it also ships its products to Canada and Asia for instance, he explained, adding that the main reason for the new project is that existing production capacities have reached their current maximum and the markets for duck have expanded according to the experience of recent years.

Mr. Kiss highlighted the fact that wage levels were also taken into account during the planning of the investment in view of the fact that suitable wages are important in a processing plant that requires lots of manual labour, to ensure the retaining of highly trained staff. The increase in efficiency will contribute to increasing wages, he said.

Mr. Szijjártó pointed out that the Hungarian food industry had expanded by 2 percent year-on-year to 2880 billion forints (EUR 9.3bn) and the sector, which employs 144 thousand people and exports 43 percent of its production volume, expanded by a further 2 percent in January.

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Member of Parliament Gábor Bányai (Fidesz) told reporters that the latest investment means as much to Mélykút as Daimler does to the city of Kecskemét, adding that it was important that a Hungarian investor, a local citizen “is able to bring the investment home to Mélykút”, and indicating that the official foundation stone laying ceremony would take place sometime during the summer, probably in July.

According to the latest available public company data, Hunent achieved total sales turnover of 9.23 billion forints in 2015, following 9.25 billion in the previous year. The company posted after tax profits of 104 million forints following 51.9 million in 2014.

(Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister/MTI)