Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency

The Munich-based BMW Group, with a history of over a hundred years, is a top premium car and motorcycle manufacturer. It has 31 production and assembly plants and 16 R&D centres in 14 countries altogether, and sells its products in 140 countries around the world. As the owner of BMW, MINI, Rolls-Royce and BMW Motorrad, in 2018 the company group had a turnover of around EUR 97.5 billion, employing some 135,000 people globally.

The factory on the outskirts of Debrecen will be the newest unit in BMW Group's European production network, setting a benchmark in the automotive industry for digitalization, sustainability and adaptability. Top technologies will make it possible to flexibly manufacture premium cars with conventional combustion engines and electric motors on the same production line. The new plant, which will be built in the framework of an EUR 1 billion investment, is planned to make 150,000 cars on a yearly basis, with the creation of 1000 jobs. These figures, however, refer to initial capacity only.

After the decision about the investment was announced in July 2018, Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Dr László Papp, Mayor of Debrecen and Oliver Zipse, Member of the Board of Management of BMW AG, Production (now Chairman of the Board of Management) signed the related land purchase and grant contract in October 2018 in Debrecen. Development projects of the past year have been within schedule, which has enabled representatives of the city and the German company group to sign the respective land sales contract at this time's ceremony. Accordingly, Debrecen will soon hand over the land to BMW to start construction works at short notice.

Following Germany and China, Hungary is the third country in the world where all the three German premium car manufacturers, namely Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, are represented with an own production plant. With its plant BMW is the fifth OEM in Hungary, opening a new chapter in the history of Hungarian vehicle production, after the decades-old success stories of Audi, Suzuki, Opel and Mercedes-Benz.

Relations between BMW Group and Hungary are not new. Only in 2017 the Germany-based group purchased spare parts and services from Hungarian suppliers at an amount of more than EUR 1.4 billion. However, it did not take long for this cooperation, which used to be referred to as the "invisible factory", to finally take a physical shape.