odelo Bulgaria, Ugur Ozay: We plan to double our investment in TEZ by 2023

So far, we have invested 20 million euro in our newly opened plant in Trakia Economic Zone (TEZ) near Plovdiv. The facility is located on 23 000 sq. m. By 2023, we aim to double our investment, to increase our sales to 60 million euro and to triple our staff.

We are currently producing spare parts, but we have won 3 mass production projects – 2 for Daimler (Mercedes) and 1 for Dacia. With them the capacity of the plant will be filled up to 40%, which leaves us enough free space for the introduction of other new projects in the future.

Our production process consists of 3 main steps: injection molding, for which we use Engel and KraussMaffei machines with different degrees of automation and robotics, we then proceed to metallization (aluminum coating) and finally assembly of the product.

The factory in Bulgaria offers many benefits to odelo Group

The country was chosen because of its membership in the EU, its strategic location for our customers and the proximity to the “mother plant” in Bursa. We were also attracted by the favorable economic and tax conditions in Bulgaria, the qualified staff and its good knowledge of electronic software and hardware. The manufactured headlights for Mercedes will be exported to car assembly plants in Germany and South Africa, and the parts for Renault will be sent to Romania.

In the summer of 2019, we officially opened a development center in Sofia. Our team (in Plovdiv and in the capital) currently numbers over 140 people in total. Sofia is the third location where our company opens such a department. The initial focus was on hiring the right people, building a team, training it and transferring knowledge. The team will now assist other development centers with their design projects for clients such as Daimler, Audi and BMW and will also work on its own projects independently. An interesting project that the development center in Sofia has been working on recently is the design of taillights for the new Dacia Lodge.