KYIV. Sept 18 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Japan’s Fujikura electric wire and telecommunications systems corporation plans to receive EUR 40 million of revenue from an electronic element and wire plant in Lviv region which is being created as part of an investment project, Fujikura Managing Executive Officer Ichiro Kamada said at the presentation of the project in Kyiv on Wednesday.
He said that at the first phase of the realization of the project, which has assessed investment of EUR 5-6 million, will create 300 jobs and will eventually increase the number of employees to 3,000 within the next three years.
“Now we’re to decide for what global automobile manufacturers we will produce goods. We plan to transfer our production facilities from Romania to Ukraine and at the first phase the products will be made at existing facilities with a gross area of 12,000 square meters,” Kamada said.
He said that if the first phase is a success, Fujikura will decide on its expansion and further construction of a plant. He assessed total investment in the project at EUR 60 million for three years.
Ukrainian Economic Development and Trade Minister Aivaras Abromavicius said at the presentation that a month ago Fujikura made the decision to resume the realization of the project on the creation of the plant in Lviv region which was frozen in November 2013 due to political events in Ukraine.
“The arrival of these companies makes us feel optimistic. Those reforms concerning deregulation, improvement of investment climate, reforms of the State Fiscal Service being conducted in our country should be more communicated, as actually along with the DCFTA agreement with the EU other opportunities are opened to create production facilities with the purpose of exports to the EU. If they manage to do everything, they would create jobs and bring investment, and their colleagues, rivals and friends would come to our country and would invest with the purpose of exports to the European market. This investment is an important signal for the government and other foreign investors that reforms bring positive effect,” the minister said.
Kamada said that Fujikura started searching for the location to realize the project in 2011.
“We’ve almost decided to come in 203 and signed the office and production facilities leasing agreement in October and November 2013, but, unfortunately, we had to freeze the project. Now we again decided to come, hoping that nothing bad would happen in Ukraine,” Kamada said.
Fujikura was founded in 1885 in Japan and gradually transformed into an international corporation providing innovation solutions. Its turnover exceeds EUR 5 billion a year.
