Upetrom 1 Mai Ploiesti, a company specialising in supplying equipment and services for the petroleum and gas industry, controlled by Constanta-based businesman Gabriel Comanescu, will let around a quarter of its employees go by the end of this year amid a drastic reduction in orders. The company will therefore make around 600 of its current 2,200 employees redundant.

"We have tried to keep from resorting to redundancies, and sent 800 people home on technical unemployment, paying them 85% of their salary in the last five months. But orders have yet to see a rebound, which forces us to lay off around 600 employees of our current 2,200," explained Radu Petrescu, communication manager within the Upetrom group.

The Upetrom representative says at least on the domestic market the company has seen a major decline in orders. "Orders on the domestic market tended to account for around 30% of our business. However, since the beginning of the year, they have been down 85%, whilst orders from abroad fell by 20%. Nothing is budging and I don't think there will be a recovery on short term. The redundancies plan has already been discussed and approved by the trade unions," added the Upetrom representative. However, this does not rule out the possibility for Upetrom 1 Mai Ploiesti hiring again when the economy rebounds.

The company posted an 87.2 million-euro turnover last year, according to data from the Ministry of Finance, with the Upetrom representative specifying the turnover will be down in 2009. Several companies specialising in the supply of equipment and services to the petroleum and gas industry announced they have been affected by a steep decline in orders, especially those originating from large Romanian petroleum companies, such as Petrom and Rompetrol. In turn, petroleum and gas companies were affected by the reduction in the price of the oil barrel