“The decision to leave Romania was made as a result of the reevaluation of the group operations,” said Adriana Ionescu, marketing manager with Tnuva Romania.
She did not reveal why the decision was made or how the departure of the company would be handled. Ionescu also did not say anything about whether this withdrawal entailed sale to another investor of the Romanian operations or they would merely be closed.
The company’s filings with the Finance Ministry show that Tnuva Romania posted EUR22.7 million losses, higher than its sales, which stood at EUR21.4 million. Whereas losses were down last year to EUR15.2 million, so were the sales, which reached EUR17 million. Tnuva Romania officials would not say anything about these indicators in 2011.
Losses since entry on the market in 2004 have reached EUR85 million, and do not include the figures for 2011, which should have been the first profitable year for the company.
Instead of the EUR70 million sales it had initially set out to achieve, Tnuva only made almost EUR25 million in revenue at most in 2008.
At the end of 2005, Tnuva, the largest company in the food industry of Israel, took a huge bet on the Romanian market, when it invested EUR55 million in a production facility in Popesti-Leordeni.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)