Company briefs - 2004-10-06

Estonian Air has lowered its minimum prices for one-way flights to Berlin and London to 495 kroons (32 euros) and 695 kroons respectively. Tickets can be bought over the Internet, the company said. The deals are valid only for Estonian Air's direct flights, and the number of seats is limited. Also, there is no discount for children and the tickets are nonrefundable, the company said. The low-cost carrier EasyJet plans to launch flights from Tallinn to Berlin's Schoenefeld Airport Oct. 27 and to Stansted outside London on Nov. 1. The company has promised the lowest ticket price will be 20.5 euros or 320.6 Estonian kroons.

The Tartu-based prefabricated concrete element producer Tartu Maja Betoontooted will begin developing a factory near Riga next week with a reported investment of more than 80 million kroons (5.11 million euros), reported. Manager Vallot Mangus has told the business daily Aripaev that the plan arose quite a while ago. "We've been thinking for three years or so that the void in that market should be filled and we should launch production there ourselves," he said. The cornerstone of the 80 million kroon facility will be laid next week at Sauriesi, some 15 kilometers from downtown Riga. Exports to Latvia accounted for around 25 percent of the company's 140 million kroons of sales last year.

Lettglas, the largest glass producer in Latvia, plans to build a new 3 million euro production facility over the coming two years. Technical director Imants Buss has said that the company wants to attract EU funds, bank loans and its own resources to the project, which should boost output capacity threefold. He said the company's current production facility has grown out of date. "We've already invested 400,000 lats (596,000 euros) purchasing new equipment to replace the old," said Buss. Last year Lettglas, the developer of what formerly used to be the Livani Glass Factory, closed with a loss of 349,000 lats, down 4.1 percent from 2002, on sales of 1.3 million lats, up 9.4 percent.