Eaton Corp considers expanding to Romania

The Romanian market is becoming a target of choice for expansion by US companies in the automotive component industry, following the takeover of domestic carmaker Dacia by French group Renault, which generated a massive inflow of French and German investments in this field. Eaton Corporation, a US-based group with operations in the automotive component industry and annual sales of more than 10bn dollars (8.25 million euros), is considering expanding to Romania the operations it already has on the Czech and Polish markets. “We are examining the way in which we can become involved in building production facilities in Romania. The reason we are considering the Romanian market is its competitiveness in terms of labour costs,” Jean Pierre Lacombe, Eaton vice-president for Europe, said during a conference organised by The Economist in Bucharest. The scope of the project being considered for Romania is similar to that of Eaton”s other investments in Central and Eastern Europe. “We have 1,000 employees at the latest facility we built in the Czech Republic. The project could be either greenfield or brownfield, and the value of the investment would vary depending on the production facilities transferred,” the vice-president of Eaton said. The output from Romania will be almost entirely exported to the Eaton group”s clients, made up of the leading carmakers from around the world. ZF