Hirsch Servo AG (A-9555 Glanegg 58; www.hirsch-gruppe.com) is planning to build a plant for the production of EPS packaging material and technical components at the expansive industrial estate of the Asian Flextronics Group (Headquarters: Singapore; www.flextronics.com) at Nyiregyhaza in eastern Hungary. The new facility will become part of the current industrial development which extends over approximately 123 acres and is designed to produce EPS packaging material for printers in the direct vicinity of the printer production site.

During the initial expansion phase, the plant will have a capacity of approximately 1,000 tonnes and a workforce of about 20 employees. Investment figures for the facility´s initial expansion phase total approximately EUR 3.3m. Construction will start in September 2001 and the plant will come on stream in February 2002. The new production site will supply the Hungarian market from the west to Budapest and to the east as far as the Rumanian and Ukrainian borders.

Currently, Flextronics operates eight industrial estates in Mexico, Brazil, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary (3) and China. These estates are deliberately set up in low-wage countries with large integrated production capacities for OEMs. In accordance with the concept of “economy of scale”, the cohesion of activities allows the supply of components and raw materials as well as the delivery of final products at optimised costs. The latest reverberation of Flextronics´ strategy was the take-over of Ericsson´s and Alcatel´s entire mobile phone production (see Plasteurope.com 13, 2001).

Hirsch Group brought on stream its first Hungarian branch facility for EPS packaging materials as part of a Flextronics industrial estate at Savar as early as 1997. According to company reports, this endeavour proved to have beneficial repercussions.