The high costs to keep going in the textile industry made the management decide to shut down operations in February 2020, but the need for masks on the local market made the company reopen for business and start on a new niche two months later.
“We stopped making textiles before we thought about starting to make masks, because costs had gone up a lot. We used to work mostly for H&M and Zara. That industry no longer has a future in Romania,” Cristian Dumitrescu, general manager of Time International, told ZF.
“We were lucky we made the decision to close before the pandemic, because it would have been disastrous for us if the crisis caught us still working. We later switched to mask manufacturing because we had kept some people who had the know-how and began making masks.”
Time International’s production capacity is five million masks per month. The company kept only a small part of its former manufacturing space and 50 employees, 35 of whom directly involved in mask production.
The plant makes 3.5 million masks in Alexandria per month, about 60% of which sold in Romania to a number of companies that give them to their employees, while the rest go abroad.
“We deliver to the United States, Malta, Latvia, Greece and mostly in Romania. About 60% stays in Romania. We would like to export more because there are several manufacturers in Romania and prices are higher abroad.”
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)