“Logistics and transportation companies have a responsibility in such times to continue activity. If they are no longer active, the entire economy collapses. We remained operational, we took the necessary protection steps and allowed work from home wherever possible,” said Albin Budinsky, CEO of DB Schenker Romania, on the ZF Live special on Logistics & Transports.
On the other hand, production has been severely affected by the closures in Western Europe, and the car plants and component plants in Romania furloughed their employees. The thaw-up has already started and next week Dacia and Ford will resume production on May 4.
One of the sectors that will be affected not only on short-term but also on longer term will be the automotive sector. This definitely is not easy for us, either, because of the focus on automotive. On the one hand, some plants resume production in May, but the question remains: how the market will react, who will be buying cars now, the DB Schenker CEO says.
On the other hand, the stake at this time is attracting new investments.
Global Vision will not drop any of the development projects started before the crisis, both those in partnership with Globalworth in Chitila and Constanta and those in Oradea, Arad and the business park near the Otopeni Airport.
In February, Global Vision announced it had signed with two German automotive investors for expansion and relocation of production to Romania and reached an agreement with IWIS and HUF, both of them about EUR10 milion investments each.
“I am optimistic about the projects we have now, on the other hand, I think the uncertainty is really high. The two plants -Arad and Oradea, keep going with a slight reduction in activity due to social distancing requirements. We confirmed and reconfirmed together with the German companies the interest and feasibility because given this uncertainty, everyone was nervous about continuing the projects,” said Sorin Preda, Global Vision CEO.
The real stake of the new crisis is attracting new investments to Europe, investments in relocating production facilities from Asia.
“We are talking about an expansion of the production facilities, which is based on cutting production in China. This is a decision companies make during a crisis. We can talk significant changes of strategy among major manufacturers,” Sorin Preda added.
However, Romania needs to step up investment in infrastructure, since there are three major hurdles between the Constanta harbor and Hungary – the non-existent Bucharest beltway, the Olt River valley and the customs, as Romania is not part of the Schengen area, he added.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)