In 2009, the Prime Minister at the time, Nikola Gruevski, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the heads of Turkish company Şişecam, a document that announced their investment in a glass factory.
The factory was planned to be built in Bunardzik in 2010; the investment had amounted to 45 million euros and in the first phase 300 people were to be employed.
CEO of Şişecam, Ahmet Kirman, explained at the time that they will be producing beer and juice bottles in the industrial area and that half of the production will be intended for the Macedonian market.
Although the Turks did not start the construction of the factory by 2010, in 2011 Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Pesevski, after a meeting with the leadership of Şişecam in Turkey, explained that the company is considering increasing the investment from 45 to 160 million euros and building a factory for flat and automotive glass, in addition to the factory for glass packaging.
"The decision for build these additional plants has not been reached yet, but we expect this to happen in the next two months, according to their reports," stated Pesevski in April 2011.
Although the investment was announced twice, this project is still not ion the list of foreign investments that have been promoted by the ruling VMRO-DPMNE in their Accountability Report for 2014 and 2016. There is also no Şişecam factory in Bunardzik.
The Turkish company Şişecam from Istanbul, instead of building the factory in Macedonia, built it in one of the former Soviet republics, with the explanation that there is a bigger market for their products there.