This is the only piece of publicly available information about the activity of Lactalis in Romania, which has hardly communicated anything to the media since its arrival in the country.
Lactalis has closed a number of plants and milk collection centers in Romania in the past year and replaced the LaDorna cheese brand with President.
The cumulated revenue of the two companies amounted to 254 million lei (EUR57.8 million) in 2013, down 9% in euros but 10% higher in lei compared with 2008.
After the French owner managed to turn Dorna Lactate, the largest company in the LaDorna group, around in 2012, last year it posted RON15 million loss. LaDorna’s plant closures started in 2011 with the cottage cheese facility in Dorna Arini, Suceava County, whose equipment was relocated to Poland.
Lactalis closed three production facilities in Suceava and Neamt last year, where it made butter and yellow cheese, as well as two milk-processing facilities. As with the 2011 closure, information first surfaced in the Official Gazette or other official documents, because the management of the company did not held any news conference or return ZF’s calls in 2013.
The latest milk collection center closures took place this year, according to the Official Gazette again.
Back in 2008, when Lactalis bought LaDorna, the local group was only one of the two major Romanian dairy businesses not owned by a multinational. The only such major business still independent today is Albalact, the second largest producer in the country.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)