German automotive company Audi has established a higher education and industrial cooperation centre (FIEK) in Győr, northwest Hungary, with the aim of increasing the attractiveness of the country as an investment destination for automotive industry research.
The new centre includes a packaging examination laboratory, a laboratory for testing internal combustion and electric motors, a turbo test bench, and a management campus that provides assistance to small and medium-sized enterprises via innovation programmes, advice and skill development.
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó pointed out that while in 2010 the annual production value of the Hungarian automotive industry was four trillion forints (12 billion euros), in 2018 the figure was 8.5 trillion forints (26 billion euros), and has increasing by a further 11 per cent year-on-year during the first three months of 2019.
“This means that the period in which the annual production value of the Hungary automotive industry exceeds 10 trillion forints will soon be at hand,” he said.
“While Hungary is only the world’s 92nd most-populated country, it is the world’s 18th largest automotive industry exporter. Today the automotive industry provides 30.7 per cent of total processing industry output, and there are currently 173,000 people working within the sector.”
“Thanks to the FIEK, cooperation between our company and the university is becoming even tighter,” said Achim Heinfling, chairman of Audi Hungária CLS , stressing that the institutional cooperation between research and development, education and industry realised via the FIEK is a future-orientated development model that enables the even more effective performance of research projects.
