At Hisense Europe we will invest approximately 45 million Euros in research and development in this year, or almost 20% more than last year.

"Innovation is a Hisense core value, and research and development a key pillar on which our company's success is based. Only by focusing on the customer, winning them over by offering innovative, high-quality products and a superior user experience, can we ensure competitiveness, profitability and growth and achieve our ambitious strategic goals," said Hisense Europe CEO Hanson Han. "At Hisense Europe, we are therefore steadily increasing our investments in research and development, in technology, education and recruiting the best talent, because to achieve our goals we need competent, innovative and motivated employees. With the R&D Center, we provide them with a modern and stimulating work environment where they can develop their potential and thus develop even better, more successful products and services."

The President of the Republic of Slovenia, dr. Nataša Pirc Musar said at the event that she was extremely happy that she could attend the opening of the Hisense Europe R&D Center, because it enables the employment of young professionals and young engineers, and these are jobs that create high added value. "I am glad that they are also thinking about green technologies. Perhaps we don’t mention often enough that China invests a lot in Europe, but Slovenia is not brave enough to invest in China. I hope that this investment here will perhaps also encourage some Slovenian companies to venture into the large Chinese market. Many thanks to the president of Hisense Europe for inviting me to this opening and sincere congratulations on the opening of this R&D center, I wish you to work well here and employ even more Slovenian engineers." Among the distinguished guests at the opening were also the Chinese ambassador to Slovenia, Mr. Wang Shunqing, mayors of the local neighbouring municipalities and deans of numerous Slovenian faculties.

In the Hisense Europe group, we increased the number of employees in the fields of research and development, design, and product management by as much as 40% in three years, so that we now employ 610 experts in the aforementioned fields, the majority, i.e., 470, in Slovenia, with the rest in Sweden and in the Netherlands.

"We have increased the number of employees in R&D in Slovenia by 130 highly qualified professionals in three years. We focused primarily on three areas of development, which are key to future technological competitiveness: the development of electronics, the development of smart connected devices and services, and the area of research and development of new technologies, which is also called pre-development," explains Dr. Boštjan Pečnik, Hisense Europe Executive Vice-President, responsible for Research and Development. "Our employees participate in cross-functional teams, increasingly use agile methods in their work, and actively collaborate with faculties and suppliers."

With the new premises also comes a new project-oriented way of working: teams of R&D and product management colleagues will form and work together for the duration of an individual development projects. With its architectural design, the R&D Center encourages employees to cooperate and enables the introduction of agile work methods in R&D, which will certainly increase the efficiency and innovation of work on R&D projects. In addition to Velenje, our experts, employed in Slovenia, can also work in Ljubljana, and soon we are opening an additional R&D location in Maribor.

The investment in the new R&D Center is part of a larger project of investments in new generations of household appliances, which will last until November 2024. We will invest around 39 million euros in it, and in the framework of co-financing based on the Act on the Promotion of Investments, we can use a little over than 9 million euros of government subsidies.