“We bought 51.67% in Atelierele Pegas,” Andrei Militaru, development director of the NOD (he runs the company’s own brands division), told ZF.
The acquisition is part of the strategy to expand this division, which includes Heinner (home appliances) and Serioux (IT products) and will generate more than 135 million lei (EUR30.5 million) revenue for NOD in 2015. NOD posted RON930 million revenue last year.
The new owner will invest EUR3 million at first to develop and expand Pegas’ product range, in order to drive sales up to 25,000 units a year in three years, ten times more than in 2015. The plan is to build a Pegas plant in Romania after 2018, using an estimated budget of at least EUR5 million.
“I did not start from the idea of turning over control. However, I realized I was never going to get such an amount of funding unless I took this step,” said Andrei Botescu, shareholder and general manager of Pegas.
He says Pegas’ goal after the opening of the plant is to return to the production peak of the communist days.
“Our goal is to reach 300,000 bicycles a year, as many as during Ceausescu’s (late communist dictator) reign.”
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)