2,750 Romanians working for Salomon

The number of Romanians directly employed by French sports gear producer Salomon amounts to 2,750 people, Virgil Pal, general manager of Salomon Romania SRL based in Timisoara says. The items Salomon makes in Romania include ski boots, ski ties, rollerblades, snowboard ties, snowshoes, Mavic biking wheels, with skis added this year. These items are manufactured by eight Romanian subcontracting factories, Chimsport (Orastie), Loricom and NDB (Arad), Rekord (Alba Iulia), Gecomod and Spumotim (Timisoara), Plastor (Oradea) and Witext (Lugoj). “These factories have 2,750 people working for Salomon in either new or refurbished industrial spaces totalling 57,000 sqm. The productive equipment was provided by Salomon and is worth more than 25 million euros if relating it to new equipment,” Pal says. “The production of skis will begin at the Chimsport factory in Orastie this February and we expect to see some 250 jobs created by 2006,” he added. The productive operations for the French group have followed an upward trend from 2.12 million production hours in 2002 to 2.46 million production hours in 2003; the 3 million threshold should be attained by 2006, according to corporate data. ZF