The company introduced a new production line that makes about 10,000 tons of buns a year, boosting its production capacity by 50%, hence the growth expectations. The investment is part of a bigger expansion project that entails increasing production capacity by 150% until 2020, with two more lines to be added, one that makes pastry products and the other craft products.
“We are already selling half of this production capacity increase of 50%. The revenue is up 25% as a result of the rise in production capacity and will probably increase further,” said Dan Minulescu, chief executive officer of Macromex, which formed a joint venture with La Lorraine Romania in five years ago.
“The expansion of the plant and of most of the infrastructure, silos, refrigeration, have already been completed for almost three modules. Each module is one line, therefore the production capacity will increase by 150% eventually,” the executive said at the inauguration of new bun production line.
The La Lorraine Romania’s plant in Campia Turzii, Cluj County (NW Romania) has a production capacity of 35,000 tons of products, about 75% of which sold on the local market, and the rest exported to Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Slovakia and Czech Republic, the company officials say.
La Lorraine Romania plans to start making pastry and craft products next year.
Belgian-held La Lorraine group, which owns the plant in Romania, ended 2015 with EUR620 million revenue and about 10% growth. The group has 12 bakeries in Europe and sells bakery products in 25 countries.
“Why invest in the bakery business in Romania? We’ve got three good reasons,” said Guido Vanherpe, CEO of La Lorraine Bakery Group.
The first reason is the consumption of bread in Romania, 90 kilos per capita per year, compared with an European average of 60 kilos, the second is Romania’s GDP growth of 3.8% in 2015 and the third is the technology improvements that will allow the group to grow and come up with innovative things, Vanherpe said.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)