The plant in the village of Rudeni part of Bucharest’s satellite city Chitila went bankrupt after four years of insolvency and was put up for auction last year, when the asking price was EUR4.5 million. The company in charge of liquidation was PwC and the biggest creditor was BCR.
“We completed the acquisition of a company under financial distress in 2015. It is about the Spicul plant in Chitila, where the total investment – the acquisition price and the spending to bring it up to Vel Pitar standards, stands at about EUR8 million. At the time of the takeover, the company had been inactive for six months,” George Frincu, chairman of Vel Pitar’s board told ZF.
The plant Vel Pitar bought was a greenfield investment and also one of the newest in the bakery industry.
The Vel Pitar group, held by private equity firm Broadhurst, posted about 530 million lei (EUR119 million) revenue in 2014 and in 2015 posted growth of 10% in sales, its representatives said, which means revenue reached about RON580 million, according to ZF’s calculations.
The bakery industry is a EUR2 billion business and the leading actors are Vel Pitar, Boromir and Pambac Bacau.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)