New Opel Engine Plant Inaugurated in Hungary

The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has today joined Opel Management Board Deputy Chairman, Thomas Sedran, for the inauguration of Opel’s new engine plant in Szentgotthard, Hungary, exactly two years after the project was announced.

The €500 million flex-plant features world-class flexibility and efficiency. It will produce highly fuel-efficient gasoline and diesel engines. It will have the ability to swiftly adapt production in response to changing market demand. The plant will have more than 800 employees and manufacture half-a-million engines per year at full capacity.

The first 1.6-liter mid-size gasoline engines that roll off the line will power the new Opel Astra range with its new four-door sedan. It had its world premiere last month at the Moscow International Motor Show. The engines provide extraordinarily high maximum torque along with significantly reduced fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. All of the new generation Opel engines built in Szentgotthard will meet the strict future EURO 6 emissions standard.

As one of the most sophisticated engine plants in the world, the Szentgotthard facility will play a key role within the European Opel manufacturing network. It will also deepen Opel’s business relationship with Hungarian suppliers and enhance the role of Opel in the local economy and job market.

The new investment in Szentgotthard has almost doubled the amount that Opel invested over the past two decades in Hungary. In the early 1990s, Opel became the first international automotive company to invest there and the first automaker to build passenger cars in the country. The start of engine production at the new facility in Szentgotthard coincides with the 20th anniversary of the production of the first Opel Astra in Hungary.

Over the past 20 years, more than 7 million engines and 5.5 million cylinder heads have been produced in Szentgotthard. Opel’s footprint in Hungary is the key to a multitude of business opportunities for Hungarian companies. In 2011, the Hungarian suppliers of Opel/Vauxhall operations in Europe had a turnover of around €400 million.