“We have just acquired a half stake in the Turkish bus manufacturer Temsa. The other half is owned by Sabanci Holding. For PPF, it is the entry into the 25th market of the world and for our @SkodaPlzen_CZ an opportunity for the development of modern ecological products, “PPF announced this morning on its twitter account.
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According to the head of the Škoda board of directors, Petr Brzezina, the acquisition of a sister bus manufacturer in Turkey means a significant shift for Škoda. “Škoda Transportation is a leader in the production of trolleybuses, we have about 14.5 thousand of them exported to Europe and beyond. There will definitely be room for a number of synergies with Temsa, “said Brzezina during an interview for the Business News List at Studio Burza.
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Škoda Transportation
The largest Czech engineering group, the main heir of Škoda Plzeň.
PPF took it over in the spring of 2018. PPF’s entry into Škoda was surprising; the Chinese corporation CRRC or the Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský had long applied for an indebted company.
Under Kellner’s rule, the group is growing systematically, today it has branches in Germany, Finland, Hungary and Russia.
It employs about 5,300 people in the Czech Republic.
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Temsa Ulaşim Araçlari is an over 50-year-old company from the city of Adana, Turkey’s largest manufacturer of buses and light trucks. During its existence, it has exported products to seventy countries. At the end of last year, however, it went into financial collapse and had to stop production. PPF started negotiations on its takeover in February this year, and has now completed the acquisition.
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The main domain of today’s Škoda are trains and trams. He makes trolleybuses in his subsidiary Škoda Electric. This year, it supplies them, for example, to the Slovak Prešov or the Norwegian city of Bergen. The Pilsen engineering group does not focus on buses, but according to Brzezina, these are related fields. “Today, we are penetrating the field of electric buses more and more, we want to make hydrogen buses in the future, so we assume that the cooperation with our sister in Turkey will be very important in the future,” said Brzezina.
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PPF took over Škoda Transportation the spring of last year. The group has been growing ever since. In the Czech Republic, it is now completing the takeover of the Ostrava company Ekova Electric, which specializes in repairs for servicing vehicles for urban transport. In the future, the production of new trams is also planned here. According to Hospodářské noviny, Škoda is also circling the factory, which is sold by the railway group Alstom in Reichshoffen, France. He did not rule out an interest in taking over Brzezin in the interview, but he did not want to comment on the open transaction so far.
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He’s recruiting hundreds of people
Škoda is not only growing through acquisitions, it has announced huge investments this year. In Ostrava, it wants to double its capacity in its Škoda Vagonka in two years for a billion crowns. In another car, Pars Nova in Šumperk promises to increase production by a third within four years at a cost of 460 million crowns. And in the home plant in Pilsen, it invests over 800 million crowns in strengthening its testing and development capacities. It also hires hundreds of employees, in Pilsen alone its staff has to strengthen by a thousand people.
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Last year, Škoda also picked up a record volume of orders worth more than 40 billion crowns. “We have secured work for four years in advance, we need new capacities,” Petr Brzezina said in an interview with Seznam Zprávy.
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However, Škoda has so far failed to turn its growth into a permanent profit. Last year, it fell into a loss of 320 million crowns, its revenues fell by almost 16 percent compared to the previous year to 9.9 billion crowns. According to Brzezina, the group should reach zero this year and start earning in the coming years.
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