Doing Business in Shumen

The Shumen Economy

The Institute for Market Economics groups Shumen with six neighbouring municipalities in the Shumen economic centre. It produced BGN 3.36 billion of output in 2021, BGN 27,200 per person, close to the national average, and its value added grew by 70% compared with 2012. Shumen Municipality generates 83% of it.³

Manufacturing is the largest sector, followed by trade, construction, agriculture and healthcare, and the centre is strongly export-oriented. Alcomet leads by both revenue and employment, and other large companies include Avtomagistrali Cherno More, Ficosota and the Tranchev retail chain.³

Aluminium, Industry and Industrial Park Shumen

Alcomet is the largest Bulgarian producer of rolled and extruded aluminium. It employs over 1,300 people in Shumen, has invested more than BGN 310 million in two decades, and sells €268 million a year, over 95% of it abroad. It was the Bulgarian Investment Agency’s Investor of the Year 2024 and is carrying out a priority investment project worth over BGN 120 million that is expected to create 160 jobs.^7,6

Industrial Park Shumen is a public-private partnership in which Shumen Municipality holds 40% and Niki BT 60%. Planned on 2,400,000 m² and under development since 2009, it sold 88,562 m² of plots to new factories in 2024 and is investing its record profit of BGN 3.318 million in infrastructure for its new subzones C and D.^8,9

ENPAY Transformer Components Bulgaria and Sark Bulgaria operate in the park and are expanding, and the Ministry of Economy expects the Shumen industrial zone to attract more than €200 million of new investment. Investors have asked for new substations, more power capacity, better transport links and faster approvals.^5,6,4

IT, Universities and Skills

In Shumen Municipality, pay is relatively high in healthcare and in ICT, where it averaged BGN 1,597 a month. The Shumen Institute of Technology, a local foundation, works to make the city a technology centre with an IT academy and a technology hub for companies and start-ups, and the municipality has presented a concept for a technopark.^3,10,5

Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen opened the 2025 academic year with more than 1,000 first-year students. At meetings with the InvestBulgaria Agency in January 2026, companies in Shumen named a qualified workforce, visas for foreign workers and closer links between education and industry as their needs.^11,6

Workforce and Salaries

• 33,300 of the 45,700 people in work in the Shumen economic centre are in Shumen Municipality, where 67% of residents aged 15–64 are employed.
• Only 3.5% of Shumen Municipality’s working-age residents were unemployed in 2022, against over 38% in Kaolinovo.
• 33.3% of Shumen Province’s residents aged 25–64 have a university degree.
• The average gross salary in Shumen Province was €1,095 a month in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Source: Institute for Market Economics: Shumen economic centre; Institute for Market Economics: Regional Profiles, Shumen Province; Ministry of Labour and Social Policy: Labour market bulletin, fourth quarter of 2025^3,12,2

Roads and Rail

Shumen Province has the highest share of motorways and first-class roads of any Bulgarian province, 37.2% of its road network against 19% nationally.^12,13

Foreign Investment

Foreign direct investment in the Shumen economic centre was €69 million at the end of 2021, and the real figure is higher because data for the smaller municipalities are confidential. By 2024 foreign investment in Shumen Province reached €1,584 per person. Investment is concentrated in Shumen and Kaspichan, mainly in manufacturing, trade, transport and tourism, and agriculture.^3,12

Source: Institute for Market Economics: Shumen economic centre; InvestBulgaria Agency: Investments that transform regions, focus on Shumen^3,6

Registering a Company in Shumen

Bulgaria has one national Commercial Register, so a company based in Shumen can be filed online from anywhere with a qualified electronic signature, or on paper at the Registry Agency’s Shumen office. After registration, the company deals with the Shumen office of the National Revenue Agency for tax and VAT, and with Shumen Municipality for local taxes and fees.^14,15

Source: Registry Agency: Commercial Register contacts; Council of Ministers IISDA: National Revenue Agency offices; Shumen Municipality: Home page and contacts; Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry: Regional chambers^14,15,16,17

The full steps, documents, fees and timings are in the guide to registering a company in Bulgaria.