Electro-Alfa and SGB-SMIT open a €20 million transformer plant in Romania

Romanian electrical equipment manufacturer Electro-Alfa International and Germany’s SGB-SMIT Group have opened a new transformer production plant in Botoșani, in north-eastern Romania. The investment in the project amounts to approximately €20 million.

The new SGB-ALFA production facility specializes in manufacturing oil-filled distribution transformers with capacities ranging from 50 kVA to 1000 kVA. The products are intended for electricity distribution operators and industrial consumers in Romania, as well as for other European markets.

Production at the facility actually began in July 2025. The plant currently employs around 100 people, while the number of jobs is expected to exceed 200 by 2027. Since the start of operations, the plant has already produced more than 1,300 oil-filled distribution transformers.

The investment project includes not only production lines, but also testing laboratories and logistics infrastructure. This makes the new facility not merely an assembly site, but a full-fledged element of the industrial value chain in the electrical power equipment sector.

Electro-Alfa International is a Romanian manufacturer of medium- and low-voltage equipment. It also provides engineering services, EPC project solutions and energy efficiency services. The company operates five production facilities with a total production area of around 35,000 sq. m, has its own research and development centre, and serves more than 500 clients in Romania and abroad.

SGB-SMIT Group specializes exclusively in the production of power and distribution transformers with capacities ranging from 30 kVA to 1200 MVA. The group has around 3,800 employees and a global network of production facilities and centres of excellence across Europe, Asia and North America.

The opening of the plant comes amid Electro-Alfa International’s active development on the capital market. In March, the company’s shares began trading on the Bucharest Stock Exchange after an IPO in which the company raised more than €110 million.

Comment by the Institute of Danube Research

The opening of the Electro-Alfa and SGB-SMIT plant in Botoșani is a significant example of deepening industrial cooperation between Romanian and German capital in the sector of critical electrical power equipment. This is not only about creating new jobs, but also about building additional production capacity in transformer equipment, demand for which is increasing amid the modernization of power grids, the development of renewable energy and growing requirements for energy resilience.

For Romania, this project is particularly important given the need to upgrade distribution infrastructure, integrate new generation capacities and strengthen the country’s role as an industrial and energy hub in Central and Eastern Europe. Producing transformers within the region reduces dependence on distant supply chains and increases the technological autonomy of Europe’s energy sector.

For Ukraine and the Danube region, such investments are also of practical interest. The recovery and modernization of energy infrastructure will require significant volumes of equipment, including transformers for distribution networks, industrial facilities, logistics hubs and port infrastructure. In this context, expanding production in Romania may become an important factor in regional energy security and potential industrial cooperation within the broader Ukraine — Romania — EU space.

The Institute of Danube Research believes that the development of such production facilities reflects a strategic shift in the regional economy: Central and South-Eastern European countries are increasingly moving from the role of a transit space to that of a production base for Europe’s energy modernization.