“We are proud to be making 60% of the amount of 20 models sold throughout the entire Europe in Romania. We are now using two plants: Sport Mechanical Workshop in Timisoara with more than 170 employees and NextCity in Resita, with more than 260 employees,” Decathlon says.
Bicycle plant VeloCity Resita in Caras-Severin County assembled 3 milion bicycles for the French retailer in 2008-2018, according to the latest data available to ZF. Decathlon is the only customer of the plant. The plant only assembles the bicycles, whose parts come from Europe and Asia. Only a small part of the components are ‘made in Romania’.
Decathlon is both the importer of the parts and owner of the finished products. Decathlon, via Madirom Prod in Romania subcontracts the workforce of the Resita company and its production facility.
This is why NextCity posted 28.8 million lei (EUR6 million), slightly down on the previous year, while Madirom Prod posted over ten times higher revenue, RON373.5 million with 40 employees in 2017, according to the latest officially available data.
Sport Mechanical Workshop, a company established in 2016 posted RON21 million revenue last year, almost double the 2017 level, its first full year in business. Its corporate website says the Timis-based company also assembles bicycles for Decathlon only. (EUR1=RON4.7487)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)