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Another bridge between the Eastern and Western economies is the fact that the energy drink producer Hell Energy Group plans to build a plant in Azerbaijan in cooperation with a local investment fund, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Péter Szijjártó, announced in Baku on Monday.
The minister said that the foundations for “another joint success story” of the two countries were being laid today with the signing of an agreement between the Hell Energy Group and a local investment company, under which the two companies plan to jointly invest 211 million dollars to set up a production unit in the South Caucasus state.
It is planned that the plant, which will be inaugurated in 2025, will produce 700-800 million aluminum cans per year, about half of which will be filled to mainly serve local and regional third-party brands, but the company, a market leader in Hungary and several other states, also plans to serve its own local and regional markets from here, he noted.
He pointed out that
demand for Hell Energy’s products is growing rapidly, with the company’s turnover increasing by roughly 50 percent last year, with the international market accounting for two-thirds of this growth.
In this context, he underlined that the company is ranked 12th in the global ranking of soft drink exports, with the sector’s export revenue in Hungary increasing 5.5 times in ten years.
Péter Szijjártó said that the world economy had been turned upside down twice in the last three years, which has led to a new era.
He stressed that the Covid epidemic and the war in Ukraine had disrupted supply chains, shattered long-standing economic cooperation, and severed ties between East and West.
The minister added that this process affects everyone, but especially open economies like Hungary, where the ratio of exports to gross domestic product (GDP) is usually above 80 percent.
However, despite the crisis, Hungary’s economy is still performing well, with a “brutal” record export performance of €142 billion last year, ranking 34th in the world, while the country is only 95th in terms of population, he said.
Continued growth in export performance is in the absolute national economic interest and is critical to sustaining economic growth,”
he warned.
Szijjártó noted that it had recently become clear that increasing export volumes in some sectors was only realistic if production was brought closer to target markets.
The minister said that the government supports foreign investment by competitive Hungarian companies, as it will lead to further growth in exports, and thus to the domestic use of part of their profits.
We are particularly keen to support these investments if they take place in countries that we consider strategic partners,
and our cooperation is based on mutual respect, which have always offered fair conditions to Hungarian companies, and Azerbaijan is such a partner,” he highlighted.
He underlined that “in the current circumstances, in today’s extremely challenging geopolitical situation, such investments are of an importance beyond themselves.”
Such joint projects show that cooperation between Eastern and Western companies, based on common sense and mutual respect, benefits all parties, he concluded.
Via MTI, Featured photo via Facebook/Hell Energy