Milling and bakery company Vel Pitar Ramnicu Valcea finished last year with approximately 15% growth in its turnover, which reached 74 million euros. The growth was partly helped by the investment it made in a sliced bread assembly line.
"The growth came at the same time as the rebalancing of our product category portfolio - milling, bakery, pasta/biscuits/wafers and shop network - and the launch of the packaged bread called 'French Toast'", said Dan Trifu, the vice-president of the company's Budget-Finance Department.
Vel Pitar invested 1.5 million euros in a new production line for sliced and packaged bread at its facility in Berceni.
According to its own estimates, Vel Pitar and its associate companies - Libertatea Bucharest, Panem Giurgiu and Postavarul Brasov - have the highest output of fresh bread in Romania.
"There's a trend that's becoming more visible, especially in cities, to adjust the bread market to new consumption habits and new distribution channels. This trend will become stronger this year and over the next few years. Development needs to be sustained by large investments by market players, but many of them are experiencing hardship due to low profit margins and the black market, which still accounts for a significant share (of the total)," explained Trifu.
Vel Pitar makes 7,500 tonnes of bakery products a month, some 300 tonnes of biscuits, 10 tonnes of wafers and approximately 120 tonnes of pasta. The company also has milling facilities, and grinds over 12,000 tonnes of wheat per month.
Trifu says it is very hard to quantify the effect of the very good wheat crop of last year on the milling and bakery industry. "On the one hand, the price of wheat in Romania remained constantly higher than in the EU, even after harvesting - though EU wheat is superior in terms of q
