- Title: GERMANY/POLAND: Geman border town booms with Polish investment
- Date: 28th March 2008
- Summary: VARIOUS OF DERELICT OLD EAST GERMAN FACTORIES NEW POLISH FACTORY IN GERMANY POLISH CAR PARKED OUTSIDE FACTORY MAN WALKING DOWN INTERIOR OF FACTORY VARIOUS OF DIRECTOR OF FLEISCHMANNSCHAFT SPICE MANUFACTURERS, MARCIN BARYLISZYN, STARTING A MACHINE WITH GERMAN AND POLISH INSTRUCTIONS AND WALKING AWAY SPICE-MAKING MACHINE (SOUNDBITE) (Polish) DIRECTOR OF FLEISCHMANNSCHAFT S
- Embargoed: 12th April 2008 15:19
- Keywords:
- Topics: Economic News
- Reuters ID: LVABAHLWGYBQ6QU5GWLBX942LZK
- Aspect Ratio: 4:3
- Story Text: While the rest of former East Germany is suffering from rising unemployment and poverty, one town on the Polish border is undergoing a boom - not due to Germans there investing in Poland, but because of Poles investing in Germany.
For years, Germans have driven across the Polish border to buy cheap cigarettes and alcohol and do cheap shopping. But nowadays it is Poles who are moving the opposite way to set up firms and to buy land and homes.
At first sight, Loecknitz looks like many other small East German towns: of its 3,000 inhabitants, one in four people is unemployed, cheap discount shops line its streets and the right-wing NPD party scored 18 percent in a recent election.
But in contrast to many towns in the former Communist East, where birth rates have slumped and apartments stand empty because jobless workers have moved to wealthier Western states, dozens of brightly-painted family homes have mushroomed in Loecknitz and with vacant land being cheap, new ones are being built all the time.
Marcin Baryliszyn is one of several dozen Polish entrepreneurs who have moved to Loecknitz, providing a boost to the small town near the Polish border, which is based in one of Germany's poorest regions.
Like Baryliszyn, many investors and Polish buyers come from the port city of Szczecin, Poland's seventh largest city, which is less than half an hour's drive from Loecknitz.
Loecknitz' mayor Lothar Meistring says that being close to Szczecin was the trump card, adding that property prices in his village were up to four times cheaper than in the nearby port city. He said that was bringing people to Loecknitz to both live and work.
"It's interesting. There is work here and the nice thing we are noticing is that the Polish companies who are coming here are outsourcing to German companies a lot," he said.
Although most of the new firms were one-man shops and only a handful of direct jobs for villagers had been created, Meistring said each Pole who built a factory or a home helped boost local construction firms, shops and schools.
He said those who were worried about losing their jobs to 'cheaper' Polish workers were worrying needlessly.
"My question to people who are afraid or worried that the Poles will take our jobs is: give me one example of one Pole who has taken a job away from a German - there are no such examples," he said.
Baryliszyn's company Fleischmannschaft, which makes meat and fish seasonings, already employs some 130 staff at Polish sites. In a few weeks, it will start producing in a new factory in Loecknitz and employ four Polish and two German staff.
"Production conditions in Poland have changed a lot recently.
Production costs have soared, and that is why our firm has decided to invest in Germany, where the costs are about the same as in Poland. In the meantime it is cheaper to invest in Germany, so we can enter new markets without the costs," he said.
Although wages were still more expensive than in Poland, cheaper property prices and branding would make the 1 million euro investment worthwhile, said Baryliszyn.
"Our investment in Germany also has marketing advantages, it means we can brand our products as 'Made in Germany'." - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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