“If the weather continues like this we will see a 20% decline in business compared with last year. The percentage will be lower only if the weather is fine in August.”
Betty Ice, the second largest majority Romanian-held ice cream producer, posted about EUR20 million revenue in 2013.
Ice cream consumption, like beer and soft drinks consumption is highly dependent on weather and cooler or rainy days may induce as much as a two-digit decline.
“Ice cream consumption more than doubles on a hot day compared with a rainy day.”
Annual consumption stands at some 2 liters (22 ice cream cones) per capita in Romania, less than one quarter of the amount a Scandinavian eats, according to the latest data available.
Ice cream consumption moves to the seaside during the summer, Vasile Armenean says, and sales go up there and go down in the rest of the country. Even so, consumption depends on the consumers’ budget.
“It all has to do with Romanian consumers’ purchasing power. If the weather is good and people don’t have money, ice cream consumption cannot increase,” Armenean says.
“The seaside performed the same as the rest of the country. We had trouble because of the storm that broke parasols and moved chest freezers. This year and last year were two difficult years for the ice cream market,” he added.
Betty Ice owns a production facility in Suceava, northern Romania, and is one of the biggest employers in its industry, with 669 employees in 2013. It has 100 small and four big ice cream shops in Romania.
The ice cream retail market is estimated at about EUR220 million (including VAT) in Romania, according to market research company Euromonitor.
Betty Ice is one of the largest local ice cream producers, competing with other Romanian businesses like Alpin 57 Lux of the Istrate family or Top Gel Prod of Petre Popa and Kubo Ice Cream. Other competitors are two multinationals: Nestle, which sells JOE and Nirvana and is the market leader, according to ZF’s calculations, and Unilever with its Algida and Napoca brands.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)