Pambac sells more only through new customers

Pambac, one of the leading milling and bakery companies in Romania, registered 5% actual output increase in Q1, 2001, compared with the same time last year, Ion Raducan, Pambac chairman, maintained. “The buyers’ behaviour has not changed much.

The only thing is that taxation is more burdensome and people do not seem to have enough money, which showed in their attitude towards foodstuffs. The increase in the actual Pambac output was not due to the intensive expansion, but to the extensive one: we have more clients, because it’s not the old ones buying more,” Ion Raducan, Pambac chairman, told Ziarul Financiar.

The company in 2000 made 400bn lei in turnover ($18 million) and 21bn lei in gross profit ($1.26 million), which accounts for a 20% increase compared to 1999. Company officials estimate a 2% turnover increase for 2001, against 2000.

Pambac officials say the consumption of bread and specialties maintained in Q1, but pasta and flour consumption decreased 6% per capita during the same interval. The company deals in milling and bakery, production of pasta, biscuits and “whatever can be made of wheat,” as Ion Raducan likes to put it.

Pambac makes 400 tonnes of wheat flour a day, 50 tonnes of corn flour, 60 tonnes of pasta and about 100 tonnes of bread. The products (apart from bread) are sold in the entire country through the distribution network, which has 96 vehicles.