“We have a team of more than 130 people. However, we are faced with a problem we can hardly find a solution to, the lack of workforce in Vaslui County,” says Alina Moraru, marketing manager of the company owned by the Moraru family.
“Both the young and the experienced people have migrated to work in other cities and especially in other countries. A lot of those that stayed would rather live off welfare.”
The Morandi group budgeted 66 million lei (EUR15 million) revenue for 2015, up 38% on 2014.
Morandi has four chicken farms with a capacity of about 630,000 head per batch and a chicken slaughtering facility, Alina Moraru said.
The group also has ten stores of its own in Moldavia, where it sells chicken and eggs. Its products are also available in Billa, Carrefour, Mega Image and Profi, which number more than 1,000 stores together.
Its own brands are Copioso, Puiul Gospodarului (chicken), Zorin 2 and Poiata Bunicii (eggs), which it sells through its Morandi stores and Carrefour and Profi. It also supplies private label products to Mega Image (Gusturi Romanesti and 365) and Billa (Bun, din Romania!).
Romanians spend more than EUR1 billion on poultry and eggs a year, two markets dominated by local businesses such as Transavia and Avicola Bacau. The market was badly hurt by the crisis and posted decline almost every year since 2009 but the food VAT cut from 24% to 9% as of June 1, 2015 gave it an over 20% boost, companies in the industry say.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)