“We are in talks with our partners to enter ten more markets. We have sufficient production capacity to export but we are in no rush, we want to do everything right,” Nawaf Salameh, chairman and founder of the company told ZF.
“The plant is working at less than 10% capacity now and we have the necessary infrastructure because the facility in the town of Bucov (near Ploiesti, Prahova County in southern Romania i.e.) was designed from the start for production over decades.”
Alexandrion signed a number of partnerships over the years to import brands from other companies such as Synergy Group (Beluga Vodka), Camus (cognac) and William Grant & Sons (Grant’s whisky) and also works with these companies to export Alexandrion Grup Romania’s products to key markets.
“We will work with Synergy Group in 15 to 20 countries. We help them in Moldova and Romania, and we will use the same distribution system as them except for their home country, Russia.”
Expansion abroad is a way for more and more Romanian spirits producers to offset the decline in consumption in Romania over the past few years and also turn their local operations into global businesses.
“We would like Alexandrion Grup to have at least 30% of the awareness it enjoys in Romania worldwide in fifteen years.”
Nawaf Salameh says he would like the entre export business to be supervised from Romania instead of doing like multinationals, which open offices in each country where they operate.
Alexandrion posted 24% higher sales in the first half of last year on a market that was flat, and ended 2015 with higher overall sales. The entrepreneur is still waiting for the audited second half results to come in, but thinks full-year growth was 15%.
Alexandrion’s net revenue stood at 105 million lei (almost EUR24 million) in 2014, while net profit reached RON6 million, according to the Finance Ministry website.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)