“It’s a big challenge to be a player on a market full of entrepreneurs but now we too are making decisions fast, we have adjusted our management style,” says Adrian Nicolaescu, marketing manager of Caroli Foods Group, a joint venture of Caroli, a business controlled by Lebanese family El Sohl and Spanish giant Campofrio. “There are more of us in the management team but we do not do what the other multinationals do. If a problem comes up, decisions are made fast.”
Caroli Foods Group and Scandia Foods, a producer owned by Swiss company Elga Suisse Alimentari, are the only multinationals among the top ten companies on the local cold cuts market. The remaining eight are controlled by Romanian entrepreneurs, such as CrisTim owned by the Timis family, Angst, controlled by Sorin Minea and Aldis Calarasi, owned by Naghi family.
Caroli has no major investment projects for this year, preferring to focus on brand consolidation and on achieving a better performance in terms of sales than the market, which will go down.
“I expect a 10% to 15% market decline,” Nicolaescu said.
The local cold cuts market is worth an estimated EUR1 billion.
The market decline that started over one year ago was caused by the decline in consumer spending as a result of the VAT hike from 19% to 24%. This also caused the closing of one of Caroli’s two plants in Romania this July.
Although sales through major shopping centers account for a significant part of Caroli’s business, the company plans to expand to other segments, such as hotels and restaurants, so that almost one tenth of the annual revenue of Caroli will come from deliveries made to hotels and restaurants this year.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu; Editing by Radu Bostan)