PSA Trnava Plant

The PSA Trnava Plant is a major car plant in Slovakia and the most recently established PSA Peugeot Citroën plant in Europe. It is located directly to the south-east of Trnava, approximately 60 kilometres (37 mi) from Bratislava and the frontier with Austria to the south-west.

The 193 hectare Site was chosen in January 2003 and the first stone was laid five months later, on 17 June.

Volume auto-production commenced at the end of May 2006, although the plant’s official opening took place only on 19 October 2006 in a ceremony headed by PSA President Jean-Martin Folz and Slovak prime minister Robert Fico even though it was his predecessor and political rival, the former prime minister Mikuláš Dzurinda who had originally agreed with Peugeot the terms for the plant's construction in Slovakia. Of the €700 million invested, €105 million came in the form of government aid.

On 8 December 2005 the manufacturer announced an additional investment of €357 millions to increase the plant’s annual capacity by 150,000 units in order to produce the forthcoming mini-mpv model known at that stage simply by the internal project designation “A58”. However, on 7 September 2006 it was announced that the expansion project had been “put on hold”, since the group had no overall need for additional auto-production capacity in Europe. Nevertheless, within the originally specified capacity, plans for Trnava to produce the “A58” remained in place. The car went into volume production in the middle of 2008 and was officially presented to the press in July and to the public in September at the Paris Motor Show as the Citroën C3 Picasso, PSA’s answer to the Renault Grand Modus and Opel/Vauxhall Meriva. French C3 Picasso sales started in February 2009 and extended to other European markets during the next few months. The Trnava factory was and in 2012 remains the only plant producing this model.

Between the launch of the Citroën C3 Picasso and 2012 the plant produced the C3 alongside the old Peugeot 207 with production reaching 248,405 in 2013, still some way short of the planned maximum capacity of 300,000 units annually. The manufacturer blamed lack of consumer demand for small cars in key western European markets, and ominously, production was suspended for six days in May 2009 and six more days in June 2009. However, PSA insisted that they would honour existing undertakings not to suspend any of the plant’s 3,000 employees during 2010/11.

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