The company plans to open a service center in Sofia with nearly 200 jobs.
BiC, the manufacturer of pens, razors and lighters, is another French company planning to enter Bulgaria. The news was announced by the company in early June and is part of the second phase of its BiC 2022 restructuring project – Invent the Future.
In Sofia, the company plans to open a service center , Group BiC Services, which will employ about 200 people. They will be part of a total of 400 jobs in the field of digital technologies that BiC intends to create. At the same time, the company will cut 450 administrative positions worldwide. The redundancies began at the end of 2019 and should be completed by 2022, and about one hundred jobs will be closed at the Clichy headquarters, which currently employs about 400 people, said Sophie Palliez-Capian, Director of External Relations at BiC.
The company has 13 600 employees worldwide, of which 1800 are based in France. The new jobs are part of the measures to transform BiC by 2022, which were unveiled earlier this year. They aim to improve the efficiency of the company and bring it even closer to end customers with the help of new technologies. To implement its plan, it plans to hire data analysts, digital marketing and e-commerce specialists, says Palliez-Capian.
Together with other measures for the production and development of products, the plan is expected to result in annual savings of EUR 45 million from the end of 2022 compared to the previously announced EUR 20 million.
However, the company has not specified until now what the impact of the measures will be on its profitability in the short term. It expects a new decrease in its profits this year due to the increase in raw materials and the increase in production costs associated with shrinking sales volume.
Future French investments
French investments in Bulgaria – business for EUR 1.56 billion
France ranks 12th in terms of foreign direct investment in Bulgaria in the period 1996-2016, with a total volume of EUR 1.56 billion over the period, BNB data shows. French companies investing in our country provide a total of over 16 000 jobs. The investments are focused mainly on high-tech sectors such as the automotive industry and raw material processing, as well as the financial and insurance services, the French-Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce reports.
The biggest investment intention with the participation of a French company this year is related to the biggest state asset in Bulgaria, Sofia Airport.
A consortium with the participation of the French investment company Meridiam Eastern Europe Investments was selected in mid-July as a concessionaire at Sofia Airport.
In 2018, trade between France and Bulgaria amounted to just over 2 billion euros, up 2.2% from a year earlier, according to data from the Ministry of Economy.
