Betty & Criss set to double production

The Suceava-based ice cream maker Betty & Criss Prod has invested 6 million euros in a new ice cream factory over the last two years. They intend to make new investments by 2007 in order to double their production capacity. “The factory has a capacity of 60 tonnes per day, with production scheduled to begin next January,” said Vasile Armenean, chairman and owner of the company, which sold 6 million euros” worth of ice cream last year (made by another factory) and expects growth for this year, but “only if the weather remains hot”. “Sales were 10-15% lower in the first half of this year than compared with the same period last year. This was due to the disappointing weather in the early summer months. This comes on top of last year being the slowest in the last ten years, so we hadn”t imagined something worse would happen. If the weather is hot, then chances are that this year”s sales will exceed last year”s,” the owner of the company said. Despite the bad weather, Betty & Criss Prod will continue with its investment in order to reach its maximum production capacity of 120 tonnes of ice cream per day by 2007. ZF