The Bosch Group has invested 83 million euro in Romania in 2022, mainly in the development of production units in the Electro-mobility Solutions business sector in Cluj and Blaj, as well as in the field of research and development, within the Bosch Engineering Center in Cluj, claims Mihai Boldijar, general director of Robert Bosch and representative of the Bosch Group in Romania. The group has invested over 5 million euro in solar roof systems to date, and will look for new sources of European co-financing for future similar projects, Mihai Boldijar told Energynomics.
The new investment of around 5 million euros in Cluj already reduces the consumption of the units by 7%, and the capacity can reach 12.5% of what is needed.
“We have already invested around 5 million euros, at the moment (in Cluj – n.r.), we also have an investment in Blaj… We are waiting for the European programs, which should be published in the middle of the year, to support the photovoltaic parks. The investment in Cluj was made by own resources. We are in discussions with the Ministry of Energy, with the Ministry of Economy, we are counting on this partnership but we have to see how it looks,” Boldijar said.
“Hydrogen is a general theme, it cannot remain only in one country. I don’t see, I can say what the requests will be for Romania, but we are following this field with interest,” he added.
The Bosch Group continues to invest in systems and solutions for electro-mobility. A new development direction will be synthetic fuels and hydrogen.
At the same time, one of Bosch’s divisions, Home Confort Group, formerly Termotechnology (Termotehnica), had a rapid development in Europe, due to the high demand for heating systems.
“Heat pumps, for us, mean new investments of 1 billion euro, until 2030, in Europe, in Germany and Poland, where the new pumps will be produced, following the course of a massive increase in demand, by 20%, of the European market. A large part of households cannot be adapted to heat pumps, however, and then we will come up with a solution that combines gas plants and heat pumps – a mix for old households, and in Germany alone there are 1 million such households. Furthermore, we have started successfully testing in Ulster, UK, the conversion of gas-fired power plants to hydrogen. There are some fears, regarding the ability of the distribution network to carry hydrogen, but it seems that there are no problems, and the transition to hydrogen of the plants is very simple and easy.”
Bosch closed the 2022 fiscal year with consolidated sales of 2.5 billion lei (512 million euro) in Romania, thus registering an increase of approximately four percent compared to last year. The total net sales of 10.6 billion lei (2.1 billion euro) recorded in Romania, including sales of non-consolidated companies and internal deliveries to affiliated companies, represented an increase of approximately 29 percent compared to the previous year. “In 2022, Bosch recorded a very good performance in Romania, with double-digit growth, despite the difficult economic and social environment,” added Mihai Boldijar.
