“We plan to make investments of EUR5 million plus VAT this year, using European funds. We want to boost production capacity; we are building another logistics warehouse and buying several vehicles for distribution and several pieces of equipment for the plant. It’s a complex project,” Florin Herbai told ZF.
The company expects to complete the project in no more than six months. It invested EUR1 million in a warehouse last year.
The Simultan plant in Timis County has a processing capacity of about 280,000 liters per day, and investment should boost capacity by 154,000 liters or more than 50%. The plant does not operate at peak capacity but only processes some 150,000 liters per day. The increase in production capacity will also lead to the launch of the UHT milk in one-liter packaging.
“The new product will be branded as Sim, but we also want to sell it as a private label product for major retail chains. About 25% of our sales are private label products of major retailers,” says the entrepreneur, who runs a company that posted 144 million lei (EUR32 million) revenue last year.
Last year, when Albalact changed hands, going from Romanian owners to French-held Lactalis, Simultan became the largest majority Romanian-owned dairy producer by revenue.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)