Building on knowledge KÉSZ

BUILDING ON KNOWLEDGE

The Hungarian KÉSZ group has gradually grown from a family business to a holding company that is today present in many different sectors of the building industry in Hungary as well as in the surrounding countries. Due to its emphasis on quality and accuracy, KÉSZ has quickly built up valuable relationships with prominent car manufacturers whilst transforming its company structure to serve the relevant market needs. Edina Beale reports.

The KÉSZ Group is a Hungarian construction and business development company that has been in operation since 1982. The company was established by its current owner and managing director, Mr Mihály Varga. The firm today employs more than 1700 staff and achieves a turnover of around €200 million every year.

Owing to its various subdivisions, KÉSZ is present on the market in many different sectors of the building industry; these include construction, production of building structures, property development, operation and maintenance, fleet management and environmental industry. The Hungarian firm is able to offer turnkey projects; from planning and design to implementation and operation, it is able to carry out the complete project using its own resources. KÉSZ has its own production capacities to manufacture steel in the Kecskemét factory and to produce reinforced concrete at its Szeged site. It also manufactures switch boards and metal sheet products to meet the needs of its partners. Nearly 80 per cent of its portfolio is for the private sector; around 20 per cent of its projects are governmental assignments.

Building the mercedes factory

KÉSZ puts great emphasis on quality and accuracy. When it comes to the automotive sector, it understands international standards and health and safety regulations, making it the ideal partner for this industry.

The group has been manufacturing steel structures for car manufacturers all over the world for the past 15–20 years. Before the establishment of Mercedes Benz in Hungary, these projects mainly included the production of technological structures and the export of building structures. When Mercedes announced it would be building a factory in Kecskemét in 2009, KÉSZ was the only fully Hungarian firm to take part in this huge building project.

The company was contracted to construct the factory’s 30,000m2 lacquering plant and the car-body warehouse facility based on German design. KÉSZ managed to achieve such high levels of rationalisation

during the preparation process that Mercedes saved significant time and money; as a result, it was also hired to build the main office too. From then on, work has been continuously coming in as KÉSZ has been able to provide a wide range of products and services for Mercedes needed during this serious development project. The Mercedes factory development was followed by Audi’s investment in Hungary, and once again KÉSZ was hired to demonstrate its skills and expertise in this major project.

Transforming to meet market needs

KÉSZ has continuously transformed its company structure to meet market needs, and when orders began pouring in from abroad it has established foreign subsidiaries. Global automotive supplier Magna hired KÉSZ to carry out projects in Serbia and Russia, and then to build built two factories in Russia. In Szentgotthárd, the company built a production hall, a showroom and a testing track for Allison Transmission and completed an SMR factory in Mosonszolnok. Modine, Pepper&Fuchs, Continental and FCI also trusted its expert knowledge. Next, a new wave of orders came from tire factories, among them Hankook, Bridgestone, Apollo and MOL.

The extensive experience and strong reputation KÉSZ has built up in the car industry has also served it well elsewhere. It was contracted to build half of the Lego factory in Nyiregyháza and new facilities for Procter & Gamble. It developed the SkyCourt for Budapest Airport, for

which it has also recently built a new passenger pier and rolling roads as well as repairing the runway and doing reconstruction tiling work at the T2 A terminal.

But it is also clear that KÉSZ does not intend to rely solely on its automotive clients. It has established an innovation centre in Kecskemét and also serves the FMCG, logistics and municipal construction sectors in addition to its auto industry projects. Following its success in central and eastern Europe, KÉSZ has extended its activities in western Europe, too. In 2016 it opened a Germany subsidiary, KEMAG Deutschland GmbH, as it expects to see dynamic development in this market in the next few years. At present, more than 15 per cent of the company’s turnover comes from its foreign subsidiaries, which is highly unusual for a Hungarian company in this sector. KÉSZ is proud of its skilled workforce and believes that the key to its success is its in-house expert knowledge, as reflected in the motto: ‘We build on knowledge’. n