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Kia Motors Employees to Stay Home Over Holiday Season
Wednesday 23 December 2009 Zoom in | Print page
Teplicka nad Vahom, December 23 (TASR) - Kia Motors Slovakia has planned a Christmas vacation for its employees working in Teplicka nad Vahom factory (Zilina region) from December 24-January 6, TASR learned from KMS spokesman Dusan Dvorak on Wednesday.
"This includes the majority of employees. However, some employees will need to come to work also over the holidays, namely those involved with maintenance and installation of new devices. Some productions will also be primed for operation a little earlier, so that assembly of the automobiles can begin on January 7," Dvorak said.
Expected production volume in 2010, according to him, should be about 200,000 automobiles. "However, the concrete figures are influenced by actual demand. Hence, we will adjust our production in accordance to the developments of the market, which are notoriously hard to predict," claimed Dvorak. He added that the Kia factory stands prepared, technologically, for the production of the Hyundai ix35 - a compact, medium-sized sports utility vehicle (SUV). If the final phase of trial production meets success, serial production is set to commence in January.
For the automobile industry, 2009 represented a difficult year, said Dvorak. "Situation on the markets changed every month. At the beginning of the year, there were significant slumps in sales, followed by subsequent rise in individual countries later on due to the support from the government-initiated scrapyard contribution scheme. The producers needed to act flexibly and adjust to that. From our perspective, this meant we needed to introduce a number of measures to cut costs. Despite the global crisis, however, we managed to maintain employment. That was important to us. I believe we'll see a better year, last but not least also by virtue of the production of new models," said Dvorak.
Kia Motors Slovakia represents the first production facility of Kia Motors Corporation in Europe. The factory was built between 2004-2006, with the car motor and automobile production initiated as of December 2006. Kia currently employs 2,800 people in Slovakia and has produced 490,000 automobiles since 2006.
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