Nijmegen-based Perry Eijhout is the owner of two Dutch and three Bulgarian companies.

Ten years ago, he started in Holland with the development of machines in the car refinishing market. After one year in the business, he decided to move the production to Poland because he had had experience in that country.

“Because of the connection with paint distributors in many countries (at the moment we export to 32 countries), I got in contact with an Bulgarian engineer,” Eijhout says. “He asked me if it was possible to produce a part of the machines in Bulgaria and so we started co-operation in June 1999. Slowly I transferred more and more products to Bulgaria.”

But directly after starting doing business together, problems arose in a range of fields. “For example,” he says, “there where only a couple of production facilities that could make an product from A to Z, so we produced in companies all around Bulgaria and had to ship and load it at a central location.”

Understandably, he finds there to be a different approach to quality between Bulgarian and Dutch companies, along with a difference in how to approach agreements.

Because of the growth of the Dutch company, they had to hold a discussion on what to do in the future. In June 2005, the result was the establishment of an own production facility for metal parts in co-operation with the Dutch government. The production facility is now situated in Kostenets.

“During the establishment of this factory, we noticed that the paperwork in Bulgaria is hard to understand,” Eijhout says. “But with the right people in the right places, we are running the factory with success.”

At the moment, they fly “in rotation” every two weeks for one week to Bulgaria.