Up to 1,400 workers can fit in the container city of the BYD factory in Szeged based on the visual plans

Last December, the Chinese electric car manufacturer BYD announced that it would build its first European factory in Szeged. Mayor László Botka was already talking about the establishment of a workers’ hostel. Back in January, we asked the Deputy Mayor of Szeged Urban Development Sándor Nagy about this, from whom we learned that the relevant government decree did not specify the location of the hotel, only that it would be built somewhere within the industrial park purchased by BYD.

Thanks to the e-construction portal, however, it has now been revealed that BYD applied for permits for the construction of the container city on the site on the western border of its territory. This means that the factory construction workers, who will probably still mostly be Chinese at first, will live as far as possible from the nearest residential area, Liliom Lakókert in Bétekelep (where the residents are not so happy about the arrival of the factory), next to the busy Budapesti út, and later even the factory workers workers too.

The container housing park is not without precedent, similar accommodations were also established at the construction site of the BMW factory in Debrecen. Csaba Szilágyi, the deputy managing director of the company employing guest workers, told the local county newspaper that the construction industry is a highly procyclical industry, meaning that when labor is suddenly needed, it must be brought here from elsewhere.

The temporary structures are dismantled after the factory is built, and then moved to where extra capacity is needed.

Based on the plans, the Szeged container city will consist of two main parts. There will be a fenced part of the workers’ accommodation, which will consist of seven three-story container buildings with 34 units per floor. In this larger area, there will be two gates, a sports field, a fire water reservoir and a larger canteen, the latter complete with a kitchen.

The area promises to be very crowded, although the visual plans include some greenery, a smoking area and a parking lot. If two workers will be accommodated in one unit, as in the case of the Debrecen site, then up to 1,400 people can be accommodated in the temporary facility.

The construction of the BYD factory can also be seen on Google’s recently updated satellite images taken in March 2024, as the earthworks for the first production halls had already begun by then, followed by the foundation.

In March, the Chinese company applied for permission to build new halls and to lay the foundation for welding plants even larger than the plant used to shape car bodies. This will also include a final assembly plant and two parking lots the size of Széchenyi square in Szeged, as well as the workers’ hostel.

We previously dealt with the world’s second largest electric car manufacturer, BYD, in a separate article. Founded in 1995, BYD was able to become very successful very quickly with its low prices, and in ten years became one of the largest and most advanced battery manufacturers in the world. BYD stopped the production of gasoline and diesel cars in 2022, and is now the world’s largest manufacturer of electric and hybrid cars combined. (If we only take electric cars, Tesla leads the way.)

The author is a Szeged journalist. The article is also published in Telex as part of the cooperation between Szegeder and Telex.