Italian company plans 12m euro farming project

Italian food producer Santi & C 1898 is planning a 12 million-euro project in the Romanian farming sector, official agriculture sources say. The company has plans for 5,500 ha of land, 5,500 cattle, 20,000 swine, an animal food production facility and tomato processing facility, a dairy and a sausage factory (including slaughterhouse). Unfortunately, Santi representatives were unavailable for comment. Sorin Minea, chairman of the Romalimenta, an organisation of food industry companies, does not consider the Italian project very large, but sees it as in keeping with Romania’s future trend as a farming country. “This is not such a big project, but it will succeed as long as Romania’s future resides in agriculture and tourism. After all, it is agriculture that is providing long-term business opportunities at the moment,” Minea said. He explained that the Italian investment in the dairy industry has potential, not forgetting that, in talks with the EU, Romania obtained a milk production quota of 3.3bn litres per year, though the initial negotiation was for 5.2bn litres. This quota is still good, since only 1.1bn litres are currently produced by the industry each year. ZF