The main three retail players on the Romanian market are Kaufland, Carrefour and real,-, foreign companies whose yearly turnovers range from a few hundred million euro to over a billion, according to the Trade Registry. The top 20 includes 12 foreign companies and 8 Romanian-owned businesses.
The largest Romanian player is MiniMax Discount, with a turnover of about EUR66 million last year. Mercadia, owned by Dinu Patriciu, in 2010 bought discount retail chain MiniMax from Austrian real estate group Real4You and two other foreign investors. At the time, the network had 31 units, but now it has close to 60. Patriciu converted some of the MiniMax stores into Macro units and they are currently being rebranded.
The second-largest among Romanian businesses is Succes Nic Com, based in Gorj county and owned by Nicolae Sarcina, with turnover of almost 200 million lei (EUR47.3 million) last year, from various operations – retail, restaurants, gas stations, transports. Information on Sarcina is scarce; he is one of the most inconspicuous local businesspeople.
The company’s name entered the spotlight a few months ago, when it purchased the five PIC hypermarkets previously owned by Ilie and Cornel Penescu. PIC is now insolvent.
Succes Nic Com is almost 18 years old and manages to grow regardless of the economic conditions on the market. The company’s main area of business is wholesale and retail in food products, beverages and tobacco, as well as non-food products, according to its website. The Succes Nic Com chain has 134 stores and revenues of EUR31 million.
Finding companies like Succes Nic Com or Annabella, controlled by local entrepreneurs, in the top 20 is a pleasant surprise considering that the financial crisis has wiped out several Romanian retail companies, like Univers’all, PIC and Ethos.
The closing of the Univers’all network, controlled by Razvan Petrovici, was the first major crash in local retail. PIC, owned by the Penescu brothers, went insolvent in 2009 over debts of about EUR60 million. At the end of 2008, PIC had almost 3,000 employees and turnover of around EUR150 million, but lost all its stores and one of the strongest local retail brands disappeared.
The crisis also eliminated the Ethos brand. The Ethos supermarket chain, controlled by Ion Soloman, no longer has any of its former 20 units. Some of its stores were taken over by chains like Profi and Mega Image, which converted them into their units.
Some Romanian players have remained on the market despite the crisis and consumption dropping by 20% in 2009-2011.
One example is the Mutu family, which controls Annabella, a businesses with almost EUR40 million turnover last year. “Although we do not know when consumption will recover, we are going to open three new units next year, for a total of 35. Moreover, we expect our business to grow this year and the next by as much as 10%,” said Dan Mutu, whose retail activity is concentrated in Valcea county.
Mutu says he has no plans to leave the county in the near future. Valcea is one of the counties with the fewest modern retailers, having no hypermarkets or cash&carry stores.
(English version by Radu Bostan)