Volvo Construction Equipment (Volvo CE) officially opened its new factory in Wroclaw,Poland. The factory will serve as a global center for production of the new internally developed backhoe loader launched at ConExpo, Las Vegas, earlier this year.

The backhoe loader is a newly designed and developed product, meeting the highest quality standards, to extend the offering of Volvo compact machines. The machine will be built in the Wroclaw factory and sold first in European countries and the USA. Next year, it will also be offered in other markets.

"The interest for our new backhoe loader from customers and media has been very high and I’m confident the customers will enjoy operating our machine," said Didier Teirlinck, Head of Volvo Compact Equipment.

Volvo CE has invested around $5 million dollars in the new facility in Poland and will start with 120 employees. In a couple of years from now, Volvo CE expects to have 200.

Volvo has been in Poland for almost 10 years and the first factory was set-up in 1995. All in all, Volvo has 1200 employees in Poland today.

"Our experiences so far are very good. Poland has a good structure for production and anexperienced labour force in important areas such as welding. Moreover, we will look into the possibility to build a solid supplier base in Poland, perhaps not just for the backhoe loader," said Tony Helsham, President & CEO of Volvo CE.