PRAGUE- Danish producer of audio visual equipment Bang & Olufsen has invested Kc480m in a new plant in Koprivnice in the north of Moravia and will employ up to 200 staff, the agency CzechInvest said.

“The company launched production in the leased premises of lorry maker Tatra Koprivnice in autumn 2004 and employed 114 people. At the same time, it started constructing a new facility in the industrial zone Koprivnice – Vlcovice where it moved in February and launches production today,” CzechInvest CEO Tomas Hruda has said. The Danish producer did not want to build a plant abroad that would only assemble products, but its aim was building a top quality facility having an own design department, said the Koprivnice plant head Michael Jensen. After a long and careful search, Bang & Olufsen picked the Czech Republic as the seat of its only unit abroad, he added. In April, the company wants to launch a technology centre in Ostrava – Poruba in the north of Moravia to design audio, video and telecoms products. Investment is put at Kc62.5m and workforce at 70 by the year 2010. The centre will employ mostly university graduates. Bang & Olufsen has over 2,400 employees and sells its products in more than 60 countries in the world. In the fiscal year 2004/05, its total sales amounted to DKK3.74bn (Kc14.3bn). Tatra sells 1,053 lorries in 2005, up 10 pct year-on-year