“Consumer spending is rising in Romania, but not because of Romanian producers, because of imports. From our experience on the frozen bakery market we noticed the volumes are high but they are mostly products imported from Europe in general. Consumption is on the rise but not driven by local production,” says Pislaru, who runs a company that posted 64 million lei (EUR14 million) revenue in 2016.
Consumer spending rose by almost 10% on the previous year, and by more than 20% in some months.
According to Eurostat data, the imports of bread and bakery products doubled in the past five years to EUR255 million in 2016. On the other hand, exports stood at EUR107 million. Romania imports mostly frozen bread and the number of local plants making such products is low.
Felix Pislaru says that imports are on the rise because many local plants built using bank loans taken at the high costs several years ago are still trying to amortize costs. Therefore they are unable to compete with a producer whose plants have been in operation for ten or fifteen years, so the investment was amortized and made efficient, enabling lower prices.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)