“This first half has been very good for the Napolact brand. We have seen constant growth over the last two or three years, at least 10% a year,” Razvan Orbulescu, marketing director of FrieslandCampina Romania, the third largest dairy business in the country, told ZF in an interview.
“Last year’s growth of the Napolact brand was almost 15% and this year the growth rate is more than 10% higher than in the same time last year. We hope the trend will continue until the end of the year.”
The data about the impact of the value added tax cut for foods, in force as of June 1, will be possible to correctly evaluate three months after that, Razvan Orbulescu says, adding he expects dairy consumption to go up as a result.
The group consists of three fiscal entities: FrieslandCampina Romania, Napolact and Industrializarea Laptelui Mures and ended last year with about 400 million lei (EUR90 million) consolidated revenue. It had almost 1,200 employees, its officials said.
Razvan Orbulescu has a fifteen-year experience with the group, where he began at Belcar, a company taken over by Nutricia Dairy Drinks later acquired by Friesland in 2001. This acquisition was the entry of Friesland in Romania. Expansion of Friesland Foods (which became FrieslandCampina, following the merger with Campina in 2008), continued with other acquisitions such as the Somesana, Napolact and IL Mures plants. The mastermind behind Friesland’s expansion in Romania was Gerbrandt de Boer, now chief executive officer of Sole Mizo, part of the Hungarian group by the same name.
Napolact generates more than 60% of the local revenue of the Dutch group, so its sales could be estimated at RON240 million. Orbulescu says the building of the Napoca brand as it is now started in 2006, around the idea of “genuine Romanian” at a time there was no such trend.
The strategy during the crisis, he says, was to focus on the main product categories, which helped boost the number of people buying those products.
Napolact sells yogurt, milk, kefir, cheese, butter and cream.
The Napolact brand has recently expanded into organic products (milk, yogurt and kefir), a segment where rivals Olympus and Dorna Lactate (LaDorna) were already operating.
“I estimate the organic segment to account for 2% to 3% of the almost EUR1 billion dairy market. It’s very little but it’s doing very well. We did not enter this particular market because it is big but because it is very attractive,” Razvan Orbulescu said.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)