Romania’s Sebes was not a serious candidate for German group Daimler’s new engine factory due to the poor infrastructure, according to economy minister Costin Borc, reports local Ziarul Financiar.

Daimler, the producer of the Mercedes cars, decided to build its new engine plant in the Polish town of Jawor, located about 70 km from Wroclaw, although the group’s representatives also looked as Sebes as a possible location, according to the Romanian media.

Daimler has a gearbox factory at Sebes, where it launched the production of the new high-tech transmission gearboxes 9G-Tronic, earlier this year, after a EUR 300 million investment.

“Daimler wanted the products to reach the gate of their Bremen plant in 17 hours. That’s why Sebes wasn’t a serious candidate for the engine factory, due to the logistic chains the producer imposed,” Costin Borc said at a conference on the local auto industry organized by Ziarul Financiar.

Daimler will invest some EUR 500 million in the engine factory, which will hire about 1,500 people. This is why such an investment would have been one of the biggest ever in Romania. Moreover, such a factory would have generated over EUR 1 billion in exports, according to ZF.

editor@romania-insider.com