Both Ion Spanu and his wife Marcela, who together run the business, are veterinarians, who knew what it means to raise livestock and how they need to be cared for. The idea of a dairy products business first came to the two spouses in the mid-2000s.
Ion Spanu started to think about how they could tap the dairy market, which was already quite crowded. He chose to tap into the exclusive niche of goat milk, and cheeses based on French recipes became basic products for the business.
The two vets first started to process goat cheese in 2007. Their first product was a goat cheese roll made based on a French recipe, the so-called “fromage de chevre” or “goat’s soft cheese,” a variety always present in the menus of elegant French restaurants.
“We wanted to have a family business and locate the plant on the southern side of Feleac hill (Cluj county – NW Romania), a few minutes away from our home, which is up on the hill top,” Ion Spanu recounts. They would have liked to link the brand name to the hill, but an authentic Romanian name did not match the sophisticated products in the French gastronomy. This is how the “La Colline” brand name came about, the French word for “hill”.
The milk is collected from a few farms in central and northern Transylvania and then processed in the company’s own farm at Valcele, near Cluj, which employs 12. Even though it is a small-sized business, the Spanus have made significant investments over the past few years in developing and consolidating it.
Up until 2007, when the plant’s activity started, they invested around EUR350,000, to which another EUR150,000 have been added in the meantime, helping increase the production capacity and diversify the product portfolio.
At present the plant’s production capacity is 3,000 liters per day. As the production capacity increased, so has the range of products, with the Valcele plant currently producing both sophisticated cheeses, such as Camembert goat cheese and truffle cheese, as well as less elaborate cheeses, such as spreadable cheese, milk, yogurt and kefir.
Despite the fact that sales are growing year after year, the business run by the two is still small. Last year was the first year that the company made a profit, and this year, although the company estimates a turnover of around EUR1 million this year, profit will be around EUR20,000.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)