The value of the deal was not revealed and Gruia Stoica did not return ZF’s calls for comment by the time the story was ready for posting.
The main customers of Reloc Craiova held by Confero SRL until the deal are CFR Calatori, CFR Marfa (state-owned passenger and freight railway companies) and the Serbian Railways according to its corporate website. Revenue amounted to 26 million lei (EUR6 million) and net profit stood at RON1.5 million in 2011.
Last April, Electroputere (EPT.RO) an important company in Romania’s industry, quit the locomotive assembly operations that had been its core business in the last few decades.
At the time of its privatization in 2007 the buyer, Al Arrab, promised to boost its revenue five times and turn it into to an international company capable of taking on locomotive making giants. The promises did not materialize.
Electroputere called a meeting of its shareholders in April last year to approve dissolution of two of the most important units of the group, the railway and urban vehicles – specializing in locomotives and the equipment repair and upgrade division – which made urban transportation equipment.
The company was to focus on making transformers, one of the few lines of business that kept it going over the last few years.
Al Arrab failed to turn Electroputere around. In 2010, it sold EUR30 million worth of Electroputere assets, twelve times more than it had paid to buy it, EUR2.3 million. The dissolution of the two units left it with only half of the 2,500 employees it had at the time of privatization.
Grup Feroviar Roman, part of the Grampet group, is the largest private freight rail transport company in the country. It saw its net profit up six times in the first half of 2012 to RON28.7 million, and expects 40% growth this year, as it said last year.
GFR bought the railway cars that Rompetrol Logistic had at the end of 2010, which is one of the reasons for its profit and revenue increase.
Finance Ministry data show GFR posted RON761 million revenue and RON28.9 million net profit in 2011. Clients also include OMV Petrom (SNP.RO), Lafarge, Dacia and Mechel, according to the latest information available.
Its competitors other than state-owned CFR Marfa are Servtrans and Unifertrans. Grup Feroviar Roman’s market share is about 33%.
Gruia Stoica has built a profitable freight transport business in Romania, Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria over the past ten years.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)