Austria's Porr Bau GmbH and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) signed today an agreement on a EUR 2.8 million loan for the construction of a factory for manufacturing rail track parts in Svilajnac.

As it was announced at the signing ceremony in Vienna, the total value of the investment is EUR 5.6 million, and remaining 50 percent will be provided by Porr.

The facility will be located in the city of Svilajnac, 100 km south of Belgrade, and will serve the rail industry both in Serbia and neighbouring countries.

Porr has already placed an order for a production line from Italy, and first rail sleepers are expected to be produced as early as in August 2012.

For a start, Porr plans to create 25 new jobs at the factory whose annual production capacity will amount to about 200,000 rail sleepers, meaning it will be producing 400 sleepers a day.

- Following on from many rail projects we have successfully implemented in Serbia, Bosnia Herzegovina and, hopefully, soon in FYR Macedonia, this new plant will accelerate the extension of Corridor X on the Trans-European network - said Porr Bau CEO Karl-Heinz Strauss.

- The EBRD is pleased to support this innovative project. The new factory will lead to the development of new products and skills in Serbia and will underpin the advancement of important rail infrastructure modernization in the region - said Sue Barrett, EBRD Director for Transport.

Since the beginning of its operations in Serbia, the EBRD has committed around €2.9 billion in various sectors of the country’s economy, with a total value of some €6 billion.