Mircea Turdean, general manager and one of the shareholders of Cluj-Napoca-based Farmec, the biggest wholly Romanian-owned cosmetics maker, says spending on cosmetics products started to rebound as early as last year.

Although consumer spending continued to fall by over 5% in the first three months of the year, after last year's 5.3% drop, according to the National Statistics Institute, Turdean says things are different on the cosmetics market.

"Even in 2010, which is considered a recession year, certain segments, such as personal care products, went up, so spending rebounded on the cosmetics market back in 2010."

Turdean forecasts 2.8% market growth this year, and an over twice as high increase of his business, by 7%.

"The cosmetics market went up 2% in 2010 against 2009, with both official Euromonitor estimates and our expectations being that the cosmetics market will continue to rise in 2011, above the 2010 growth, by around 2.8%," said Mircea Turdean, Farmec's general manager. The Turdean family is also the company's main shareholder.

The Romanian cosmetics market is put at EUR700 million in 2010 by Euromonitor market research company. The market value is set to grow to EUR1.2 billion by 2015 and EUR2.2 billion in 2020, according to the quoted source. On this market Farmec competes with L'Oréal, P&G, Henkel, Unilever and Avon.

Farmec Cluj-Napoca on Monday reported revenue of RON24.4 million (EUR5.9 million) in the first quarter, up 15.6% on the year, on increased sales of Gerovital products.

In 2010, Farmec posted sales of RON95.9 million, up 10% on the year.

Mircea Turdean, general manager and one of the shareholders of Cluj-Napoca-based Farmec, the biggest wholly Romanian-owned cosmetics maker, says spending on cosmetics products started to rebound as early as last year.

Although consumer spending continue