Thus, Romania is becoming a market for imported chocolate instead of a European player like French, the Swiss or the Belgians are.
Imports currently cover 60% to 80% of the chocolate consumption in Romania, reveals a ZF analysis of the data provided by the Association of Chocolate, Biscuit and Confectionery Industries of the European Union (CAOBISCO).
“The chocolate business is difficult now because raw material prices have risen over the last couple of years and production costs have gone up, too, as a result of the rise in electricity and fuel prices, which hurt the bottom line,” Mihut Craciun, who ran chocolate producer Kandia for two years, told ZF.
He says chocolate consumption fell by 20% last year compared with 2011, and forecasts are not pointing to positive developments this year, as long as the purchasing power does not improve.
Romanians eat 40 million to 45 million kilos of chocolate a year, or less than two kilos per capita. Consumption peaked to more than 60 million kilos in 2009. They eat five times less chocolate than Germans and almost twice less than Italians do.
In 2006 almost 80% of the sweets eaten in Romania were locally made, now most them are imported. Romania had only 265 companies making cocoa, chocolate and sugary products left by 2011, which submitted reports to the Finance Ministry, according to Trade Registry data.
Only three of them were employing more than 250 people. Back in the late 2000’s there were dozens of such plants. The major plants still in business today are the Kandia chocolate factory in Bucharest, Heidi in Pantelimon (Ilfov County near Bucharest) and Nestle’s Joe wafer plant in Timisoara (western Romania).
Most major companies in this business chose to import the chocolate. Mars, Kraft Foods and Ferrero Rocher for instance, do not own chocolate production facilities in Romania.
Even though Romania started building a chocolate industry in the late nineteenth century (the first plant was established in Timisoara in 1890), it was unable to keep a tradition in this business like the Swiss, French and Belgians did. After 1990 various entrepreneurs and multinationals bought plants and then either closed them or relocated operations to other countries.
The first to go was Feleacul in Cluj in early 2000’s, which made room for a real estate development. The first sweets producer that decided to relocate production to another country was Perfetti van Melle (owner of Mentos and Chupa Chups). It decided to stop production in Cluj and move it to other facilities it had in Europe in 2009.
Soon thereafter Kraft Foods announced it would close the plant in Brasov where it used to make the Poiana chocolate, one of the best-known local brands.
It is now making Poiana in Bulgaria, where it owns a plant. The only Kraft products still made in Romania are the Chokotoff chocolates and Smash chocolate bars produced on some lines the company rented to Brasov-based Rap Confectionery.
“Buying plants and integrating them can boost productivity,” said Mihut Craciun, who left the chocolate industry in January this year.
The two companies that still own chocolate plants in Romania are Kandia Dulce and Heidi Chocolat, both of them controlled by Austria’s Meinl family.
The top competitors on the chocolate market put at about EUR300 million are Kraft Foods, Mars Romania, Nestle Romania, Kandia Dulce and Heidi Chocolat.
Nestle Romania, the largest of them by revenue, posted EUR157 million sales in 2011, according to the latest available data.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)