Distribution and logistics hold key to sales

Consumer goods producer Unilever South Central Europe (USCE) based in Bucharest decided that all its home and personal care products made in this part of the world should go through a distribution platform in Oradea. This comes as a result of a contract it concluded with Centrum Romania logistics and distribution company.

This move is part of a trend to change distribution strategies that has become visible on the Romanian consumer goods market over the last few years.

The companies in this business are paying more and more attention to distribution and logistics, which have become key issues for boosting sales figures in the last couple of years.

USCE products were until now stored in Giurgiu. The relocation is due to Oradea’s proximity to the Western border (now only three kilometres away from the European Union frontier) and the higher storage capacity there.

The contract was settled for a three-year period and USCE hasn’t ruled out extending it to cover other products.

USCE’s goods will go from Oradea to each of the seven other countries in the region where the company has branches open, USCE officials said.

“The key element that prompted the opening of this centre is the need to achieve the best quality/cost ratio from our logistics service. This is entirely a logistics optimisation project inside USCE,” said USCE chairperson Martina Kastler.

Unilever’s representatives added that Unilever was a supporter of outsourcing logistics services to a specialised company, as “this can generate added value, by delegating execution but retaining control.”

Dragos Rosca, project manager with Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, feels the number of companies specialising in logistics will keep increasing.

“Companies will want to have more and more control over the actual sales, leaving logistics to specialised companies,” Rosca said, adding that such moves have always been made on the market, but only recently become more transparent and therefore better publicised.

The centre in Oradea has 5,000 pallet locations and was built in a five million euro investment. The total storage space is 11,000 sqm.

Centrum Romania’s general manager Marc Paulissen said the talks with USCE representatives began in August 2003 and the partnership became effective in February this year.

Paulissen also stated that Centrum Romania would complete a further investment of six or seven million euros in a similar centre in the Militari area of Bucharest, taking up some 15,000 sqm.
claudia.covaci@zf.ro