36-years old Romanian supervises six Kraft plants in Central Europe

American consumer goods giant Kraft, with 40 billion dollars in turnover, has put chocolate production in six plants in Europe in the hands of a 36 year-old Romanian, who also ran the American producer’s Brasov plant.

Corina Cioranu, whose first job was with confectionery producer Kraft Romania thirteen years ago, is one of the few women at the helm of a Kraft plant and has been working as area director manufacturing for Central Europe at Kraft for over a year, overseeing production operations of six plants that generate hundreds of millions of euros in sales per year.

The Kraft executive believes Romania is a much more flexible market for launching new products than Western European countries are.

“Austria is a very mature market where it is difficult to introduce new products, as opposed to Romania, which is very flexible, (…)”the executive says.

Kraft is the biggest player on the Romanian chocolate tablet market, put at around 250-300 million euros. Its brands Milka and Poiana have an around 50% market share, according to data available.