Bonduelle opens warehouse in Hungary

French vegetable producer Bonduelle has built a new, 5,000-square-metre warehouse in Békéscsaba, southeast Hungary, in a EUR 1.5 million investment project. The company says it has further investment plans lined up.

Bonduelle, world leader for tinned vegetables, has recently inaugurated the new warehouse, it said in a statement, adding that it is also modernizing the sterile section of the processing plant, in two stages. An investment project of similar size last took place at the Békéscsaba in 2008, when Bonduelle was the first in the country to build its own sewage cleaning facility for its plant.

As the financial website portfolio.hu reports, Bonduelle processes corn and peas in Békéscsaba and sells the tinned products domestically and abroad. The plant churns out 150 million tins of vegetables annually. As many as 50 different packages are marketed in Hungary and globally. The unit supplies semi-finished products to France, packaged goods to Poland, Germany, Russia and the CIS markets.

Bonduelle’s Békéscsaba unit has a 70-strong steady headcount, but in processing season staff is expanded to 150 people. The plant collects raw materials from 5,500-6,000 hectares (corn and peas), with 90% of the suppliers being farmers in Békés County. In order to further increase cost efficiency and boost output the company has further investment plans lined up.

Bonduelle Central Europe Zöldségfeldolgozó Kft. (BCE) is member of France’s Bonduelle Group, which set foot in Hungary in the early 1990s. It has two production facilities, one in Nagykõrös and another in Békéscsaba. According to the annual TOP 200 list of weekly Figyelõ, BCE had HUF 33.3 billion net revenues in 2011.