That changes the hiring question. A search for Kranj engineers is not a search for talent moving from diesel to electric within one plant. It is a question of which site, which product line and which owner decision a role belongs to. This article sets out what the public sources support, what they do not, and what a senior hiring leader should establish before opening a search.
Where Hidria's Work Sits
Hidria is the group whose Kranj presence the public sources let us check most directly. The public record places its products at separate sites. Its Kranj operation is registered as a branch of the group's Slovenian company at Savska loka 4, and it sits within the group's Lamtec business, which supplies electrical steel laminations and stator and rotor solutions for electric motors. The company's own product information says that electric and hybrid vehicles from well-known brands are powered by motors that use its lamination solutions. A 2013 ISO/TS 16949 certificate for the Kranj branch, valid until 2016, listed lamination, stamping and cathodic dip coating (KTL) work at the same address. ISO/TS 16949 is the predecessor to IATF 16949. We found no current certificate in public records.
The group's diesel cold-start business is a separate operation. Its glow plugs, fuel and intake air heaters and Optymus PSG cold-start system are associated with a plant in Tolmin in western Slovenia. The company's contact information lists its Advancetec unit at Tolmin, and a separate cold-start company, Suzhou Hidria Diesel Cold Start Technologies, at Changshu in China. An automated Optymus PSG production line was launched in Tolmin in July 2018, according to the Slovenian Press Agency (STA).
The investment Hidria describes as its largest in its history is an e-mobility centre in Spodnja Idrija. Hidria announced it in 2021 at an estimated €40 million. It is planned to produce stators and rotors for electric drives. A 2025 event notice says the centre was built from 2022. We did not find a published completion date or a final cost.
On the public record, then, the group's electric-drive activity sits in two places: lamination work linked to Kranj and stator and rotor capacity in Spodnja Idrija. We found no thermal-management production line in Kranj.
Ownership Changed in 2024
Gonvarri Industries agreed in June 2024 to buy all of Hidria's shares, and reports of the closing in November 2024 describe a majority holding. Investment and staffing decisions for the Slovenian sites are therefore taken within a new group structure. The public sources do not say what that means for headcount in Kranj.
The group's website gives its workforce as more than 2,000 employees, including 300 engineers. Business-data services put the Slovenian company's headcount at between 1,535 and 1,598 in 2024. Neither figure is a Kranj count, and we did not find a published headcount for the Kranj branch.
What the Public Record Cannot Yet Size
The public record does not give a verified total for Kranj's precision engineering base. We could not confirm a firm count, an employment total or a revenue figure for the cluster from an official source. The sources we could open describe individual sites instead. The Šenčur business zone, between Kranj and Brnik airport, is described as covering about 100,000 square metres of business space by RP Investicije, the developer that runs the zone and plans to expand it. The municipality's zone register lists the individual industrial zones and their undeveloped area.
Any single figure for the whole cluster should be treated with caution until an official count is available. A search brief should be built from the site and the role, not from a cluster total.
The Regional Labour Market Is Tight
Registered unemployment in Gorenjska was 3.3% in February 2025, against 4.9% for Slovenia as a whole. The figures were reported by Megafon on 8 May 2025. A low regional rate means few registered jobseekers in the region. It does not measure how deep the pool is for a specific skill. The public series we could open do not break out senior CNC programmers, tool and die designers or IATF 16949 quality managers, so a regional rate cannot tell a hiring leader how many people with those skills are available.
Where Hiring Demand Is Likely to Sit
The documented product lines point to four role families. This is a hiring conclusion drawn from the product mix. It is not a sourced count of open roles.
- Process and tool engineering for stamped parts and laminations, following the stamping and lamination work recorded for the Kranj branch.
- Quality engineering to IATF 16949, the automotive quality-management standard that production-part suppliers are audited against.
- Motor-component process engineering for stators, rotors and laminations, where the group's electric-drive work is concentrated in Spodnja Idrija and, for laminations, in Kranj.
- Maintenance and automation technicians for automated production lines of the kind the group has installed in Tolmin.
Which of these roles is open at any given time is not in the public record. A search brief should confirm the role, its site and its product line with the hiring manager before a candidate profile is written.
Pay Positioning Needs a Like-for-Like Series
We did not find a published, occupation-level pay series for Kranj that can be set against Ljubljana or the Austrian border. The all-sector averages available for Slovenian municipalities are not manufacturing series, so they cannot support a claim about a Kranj-to-Ljubljana gap for engineers. Until a like-for-like manufacturing series is available, pay positioning for a Kranj role should be set against current offers in the market rather than a regional average.
Open Questions for a Kranj Search
- Which site does the role belong to: the Kranj branch, Tolmin or Spodnja Idrija?
- Is the product line electric-drive (laminations, stators, rotors) or combustion (cold-start systems), and do the skills transfer between them?
- What is the Kranj branch's current headcount and vacancy count? Neither is published.
- What is the Kranj branch's current IATF 16949 status? The 2013 ISO/TS 16949 certificate we found is historical.
- When did the Spodnja Idrija centre reach full production, and what was its final cost?
- How has the change of ownership affected investment and hiring plans for the Slovenian sites?
What This Means for a Hiring Leader
The public record supports a narrower claim than a cluster-wide shift from combustion to electric drive. Hidria's Kranj branch is linked to the electric-drive supply chain through laminations. Its diesel cold-start business and the investment it describes as its largest are elsewhere. A Kranj search should therefore start by identifying the site and product line of the role, not by assuming a cluster-wide shift from combustion to electric drive. Where the role is tied to laminations or stamped motor parts, the candidate pool is likely to overlap with automotive quality and tool-engineering skills. Where the role is tied to cold-start systems, the relevant labour market is Tolmin's, not Kranj's.
KiTalent's industrial and manufacturing search team can map the candidate pool for a specific Kranj role, starting from its site, product line and skill set, across Gorenjska, Ljubljana and the Austrian border zone. Start a conversation about the role, and we will say which parts of the brief the public record can support.
Related Links
- Kranj
- Slovenia
- Industrial Manufacturing and Robotics
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