BusinessMagazin

Tag: Producers

  • Meat from head to tail

    The biggest problem that Tudor Neculoiu, owner of meat producer Sergiana, had with a representative of the Romanian authorities, occurred when a quality control officer wanted to fine him because the amount of soybean contained was not featured on the salami label. The incident took place in one of the three stores which Tudor Neculoiu had opened in Bucharest, in an attempt to develop in Bucharest the Sergiana butchery model tested in 27 stores in Brasov and the surrounding area.

    ”Eventually, the inspector understood that we weren’t using soybeans or other additives in our charcuterie, and left us alone,” Tudor Neculoiu recalls about his experience with Bucharest – a market he has not placed a lot of faith in, anyway, given that he has already closed two of the three stores here, and that the Capital is not on the list of future openings. ”In the provinces, the market is the preferred place for shopping, but we discovered that in Bucharest – which is a very difficult market, anyway, primarily as far as supply is concerned – things are quite different; everybody goes to the supermarket for shopping,” says Neculoiu, who thinks a lot of the charm of the traditional way of shopping is lost in this way.

    The word ”traditional” is echoed throughout the interview that BUSINESS Magazin did with Tudor Neculoiu. Tradition is in fact what inspired him to go into business in the first place, and his first plan took shape when Tudor Neculoiu was travelling across Europe with a traditional folk dance ensemble: ”When I saw the Bavaria and the Tirol area, I realised it was very similar to the place where I was born, Poiana Marului, and I realised that Romanians could also make money from rural tourism”. Neculoiu at the time was dreaming of building a tourism complex which would include a bakery, a milk plant and a charcuterie plant, in order to offer traditional products to foreigners coming to the Brasov area, like he had seen done in Western Europe.

    In the early 1990s, he opened a bakery in Poiana Marului, whose profit he invested in a meat plant. The projects grew, but tourists failed to rush in. Because his dream of having a business in tourism did not come true, the businessman thought about turning it into something else, so, over a 20-year period, he built a group of companies which includes a pig farm, a slaughter house, a charcuterie plant, a 27-store chain and 5 restaurants.

  • The percentage of dark chocolate

    ”I would rather wake up in 2011, but, unfortunately, every morning I find it’s still 2009,” says Jihad Jabra, general manager of chocolate producer Supreme Chocolat. The decline in chocolate sales over the last few months has not been anticipated by chocolate producers, which did not think any segment of the food industry would be significantly affected by the current situation. Whilst in the first part of last year, chocolate producers were complaining about the high costs of raw materials and hoping things would improve, allowing them to invest more in production, the last few months of 2008 proved to them that things could be much worse.

    ”We don’t have all the figures yet, but we have felt a decline in orders from retailers,” says Jabra, for whom the clearest signal was the low demand for chocolate in November, otherwise a month boasting the highest sales. In 2008, however, people tended to put off their holiday chocolate shopping until December, and they didn’t even buy as much as in previous years. ”I think this change came about amid negative information which emerged in October,” says Erwin Vondenhoff, general manager of Heidi Chocolats Suisse. 2008 had started well for everybody, with satisfactory sales and economic growth, the only complaint voiced by producers being related to personnel shortage.

    ”However, starting in October, we felt a blockage, growth slowed down, with sales lower than the forceful start would have had us expect. It was apparent that consumers moved quickly from emotionally-driven to functionallydriven purchases,” says Jabra. Producers will not be able to offer cautious consumers more attractive prices, quite the contrary: They have accepted that, like most producers in the food industry, they will be forced to increase prices, amid an increase in the cost of raw materials and amid exchange rate fluctuation (which will mainly affect importers, generating a gap between Romanian-produced chocolate, one of whose advantages is that its labour costs are in RON, and imported chocolate).