Honeywell eyes Romanian expansion

US industrial giant Honeywell, one of the world’s most powerful groups, with $23 billion in turnover, is looking for opportunities to expand on the Romanian market.

“We are mainly targeting the four major operations from our portfolio – aerospace, automation and control solutions, specialised materials, transportation and power systems,” Honeywell president and CEO Davis Cote said on Monday in Bucharest.

Honeywell’s Romanian branch, which owns a Bucharest-based auto parts plant and sells industrial equipment, has seen fast growth in the last years and has come to account for “almost 1% of the total figures reported by the entire group,” Cote said. The production capacity installed by Honeywell in Bucharest in 1998 climbed to $100 million in turnover last year. “We hold in Romania one of the largest turbo-blower plants in Europe, a business that posts a fast growth pace. We are now trying to better understand the domestic market and its needs, to see how we can meet them,” David Cote said. Central and Eastern Europe is, just like India or China, an emerging market logging a rapid growth pace, and Honeywell is planning to be a part of it, Cote added.

This has been Cote’s first visit in Romania, since he was appointed president and CEO of the Honeywell group in 2002. He had several meetings with the authorities scheduled for Monday, to discuss the new business development. The American corporation’s expansion plans for Romania include the chemical industry and sensor producing capacities.

Honeywell employs some 500 people at the two local companies Honeywell Garrett SRL, which operates the plant, and Honeywell Romania SRL.
adrian.mirsanu@zf.ro