Company briefs - 2004-09-09

A German-Australian aircraft manufacturer might establish a plant for building small aircraft in Estonia's Ida-Virumaa region, the Eesti Paevaleht daily reported.

Representatives of Storch Aviation recently visited the country. "By current plans, we hope to produce 300 planes annually in the same place 's provided we get the orders," Mathias Stinnes, a company manager, said, adding that this would be a record for the company, which has only made 150 small aircraft in six years. "The firm would train its staff locally and hire up to 250 workers," he said. Edith Kiilmaa of the Enterprise Estonia foundation said that if the plans succeeded, manufacturers would also set up an amateur pilot academy and airfield.

Latvia's juice maker Gutta said it was planning to invest some 3 million euros this year and next on building a new production line and warehouse. The new line would be used to produce products in PET bottles. In the January-August period of this year, Gutta managed to boost its net turnover by 18 percent to 6.9 million lats (10.3 million euros).

Litnaglis, Lithuania's nail producer, said it would shift part of its manufacturing to Belarus, which is closer to raw materials and has cheaper electricity and labor. CEO Mindaugas Bondauskis said that competition with Russia's metal producers was too harsh, and that the company would have to search for solutions to save itself. "Metal prices have increased, whereas Europe is short of stocks. We are absolutely dependent on raw material suppliers from the East. Moreover, Russians are buying more and more European plants using metals for the manufacturing process," Bondauskis explained.