Tinmar Ind, a company of businessman Augustin Oancea, is ready to tap into a segment dominated by the major electricity distributors and suppliers Electrica, Enel, CEZ and E.ON.
The reports of the energy market regulator ANRE show there are more than 8.5 million household consumption points in Romania compared with the almost 322,000 corporate consumption points.
Although the household consumer market is theoretically free, which means a consumer is free to change their electricity supplier for a better price, actually nothing much has changed yet, either because of the lack of better offers or a relative lack of mobility on the party of consumers. Moreover, the big electricity suppliers are not very comfortable with this new freedom of consumers.
“One of the most important projects the company embarked upon last year is the starting of the necessary steps to enter the household electricity consumer market in Romania. One of the most important projects in 2016 is implementing the necessary logistics to supply electricity to household consumers in Romania,” the company officials say.
Augustin Oancea therefore becomes the second local entrepreneur that tries to break the monopoly in this sector, following statements of RCS&RDS of businessman Zoltan Teszari that said last year it wanted to build a parallel network to distribute electricity in Oradea and near Timisoara. The step should enable 10% savings on the power bills for the consumers in the region, its representatives said.
Another goal of Tinmar is to expand abroad, its officials say, and this is why it got a license to supply power in Serbia, Turkey and Bulgaria.
“We want to develop the portfolio of end customers in Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Turkey and Bulgaria in 2016, as well as getting a license to supply electricity in new European territories: Poland, Slovenia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Italy.”
Tinmar currently has a presence in Romania, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Bulgaria, Serbia, Czech Republic, Greece, Slovakia, Croatia and Turkey.
Tinmar Ind had 1250 customers at the end of 2015, its officials said. Although they did not provide any names, according to the latest information available, the list of customers included steel plant COS Targoviste, Automobile Dacia, TMK-Resita, Lukoil, Doosan IMGB, Lidl, Arctic, Petrosantander, Metro Cash & Carry and Nepi Invest.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)