“We buy potatoes from the domestic market. We have around 30 domestic suppliers with which we have medium and long-term contracts. Some of them have worked with us for around ten years, since we started production in Romania,” says Cristian Rey, who runs the Romanian operations of Intersnack.
Rey, 43, who works for 13 years with Intersnack, says that he has seen Romanian farmers make a lot of progress in this period and that when sealing a contract with domestic farmers he asks for “detailed” technical specifications.
Ioan Benea is one of Intersnack’s suppliers and has been delivering potatoes to the domestic subsidiary of the German group right from the beginning.
Without providing any details about the price or delivered quantities, he says the collaboration is good. “By having this contract inked with Intersnack we are hedged from price fluctuations,” says Benea, a major domestic potato farmer, with over 100 cultivated hectares.
Potato prices have plummeted lately, from over three lei (EUR0.7) per kilo in early 2011 to below RON1 at present. Rey says in his turn he, too, is protected against price fluctuations.
The company chose suppliers from Brasov, Covasna and Harghita counties to be close to the plant in Ghimbav, Brasov, where Chio chips are made. The German company opened the Ghimbav plant in late 2009, after an investment of EUR7 million.
Intersnack’s sales, which reached some EUR37 million last year, may double in 2011 after the acquisition of the Nutline seed and dried fruit unit from the Alka group in late 2010, says Cristian Rey.
Intersnack has three production facilities at the moment: one in Brasov, where it makes potato chips, one in Bucharest, dedicated to peanut and seed products and one in Filipestii de Padure for the seeds range. While in the case of potatoes, Intersnack works with Romanian suppliers, the seeds and peanuts are from foreign sources.
(English version by Catalina Apostoiu)