site.btaBulgarian-German Joint Ventures to Manufacture Gunpowder, 155mm Artillery Rounds on EUR 1 Bln Shared Investment

Gunpowder and NATO-calibre 155 mm artillery rounds will be manufactured in Bulgaria under two joint-venture agreements with Germany's Rheinmetall, it emerged from a Facebook livestream of GERB leader Boyko Borissov on Monday. The agreements are to be drawn up within three weeks, he added.

The news was broken after Borissov conferred in Dussledorf with Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger. 

"The gunpowder factory will be as big as two German factories here, the largest in Europe. This is the scarcest commodity at the moment, and I am extremely grateful to Mr Papperger for choosing the grounds of the Vazovski Mashinostroiteleni Zavodi (VMZ) for this huge factory," Borissov said. He described the factory for 155 mm artillery shells as "extremely important for the Bulgarian army and for Europe as a whole," adding that the factory's target capacity is 100,000 rounds.

"We have informed the European Commission of these two projects, and we have ensured the funding on the part of the Bulgarian State through the SAFE (Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform) mechanism.

"All this must be completed within the next three weeks so that it can be submitted to Parliament for ratification," Borissov pointed out.

He mentioned yet another new project, for a drone design and building factory, which will be either a new establishment of the branch of an already existing one.

Borissov thanked Rheinmetall executives for sending teams to Bulgaria regularly since March, as well as to Papperger for taking notice of Bulgaria and recognizing its enormous potential.

"Bulgaria is an extremely important country for Europe, but also an extremely important country for Rheinmetall," the CEO said in the same livestream. 

"Rheinmetall, together with Bulgaria, will soon build at least two factories in Bulgaria, the first of which for artillery shells," Papperger added. "Even more important is our gunpowder joint venture," he said. The CEO pointed out that the Bulgarian government and Rheinmetall will invest jointly over EUR 1 billion in the manufacture of these important products.

This was Borissov's third meeting with Pappeger this year, after a session in April in Germany, following which he told journalists that he had sent Bulgarian Prime minister Rosen Zhelyazkov a very detailed investment offer for a gunpowder factory, in cooperation with the German company Rheinmetall," and at the end of March, during a visit to Bulgaria by Papperger and a Rheinmetall delegation. Before that second get-together with Borissov, the German executives conferred with Bulgarian President Rumen Radev.