M.A.S.I Company, a Finnish clothing designer, agreed to purchase a small textile plant owned by Estonia's Sangar, a garment maker. Sangar said it was selling Sangar Valga Factory since subcontracting for M.A.S.I already accounted for 80 percent of the plant's output. The new owner will invest in new equipment in the factory, which is in Valga. With a work force of more than 200, the Valga factory generated sales of 70 million kroons (4.5 million euros) in 2006. Sangar said it would focus on manufacturing shirts under its own brand in Tartu, its traditional base.
A Norwegian property investment group, Verdispar, purchased its second logistics center from Vinges Trassphere Logistika, a Lithuanian-Finnish firm, for an undisclosed amount. The 23 million litas (6.7 million euros) logistics center is located not far from Vilnius. "This sale-leaseback deal is Verdispar's third major transaction in the Lithuanian logistics market," Halvor Olsen, CEO of the Verdispar Group, said. Verdispar has invested some 550 million litas in property development since it started of operations in Lithuanian in 2005.
The Kaliningrad plant of Lithuania's Snaige, a refrigerator manufacturer, has fallen short of its expectations, CEO Mindaugas Sestokas told the Verslo Zinios daily. The decline of the U.S. dollar has consumed the plant's projected profits for 2007. "Our expectations were much higher. The business plan of the plant built back in 2004 was rather optimistic. However, Russia is Russia, and it is rather difficult to get a foothold in the market of that country. We have about 2 percent of the market, which is rather good considering huge competition on Russia's refrigerator market," Sestokas said. Plant director Rimantas Berzanskis was more upbeat, saying the plant would begin working in two shifts in 2008, and the workforce would grow to 700. Output is expected to grow to 191,000 refrigerators this years, from 133,000 in 2006.
