Porcelain and faience travel back in time

The Gross Domestic Product, wages, the milk or cement production still have some way to go before climbing back to the 1989 levels. Yet porcelain and faience, made by an entirely privatised industry, have already reached that threshold and even crossed it.

The annual porcelain and faience output is now 20% higher than before 1989, in spite of the lower productive capacity, Gheorghe tentu, chairman of Glass and Fine Ceramics Industry Employers’ Association told Ziarul Financiar.

The production of fine glassware for household use progresses at the same pace, as it gains 10% every year, even though the productive capacities are now half of what they used to be back in the communist age, according to tentu. Eighty percent of the fine glassware for household use (glasses, vases, adorned glass) are exported to the EU, US, and Japan.

The two glass and fine ceramics industry sectors have actually attracted most of the investments. The main porcelain and faience producers are Cesarom Bucharest, Mondial Lugoj, Cesiro Sighisoara, Apulum Alba Iulia and Sanex Cluj-Napoca. The household glassware market is highly fragmented, ranging from microenterprises with two or three employees to large companies that also make other glass or ceramic items. All in all, the domestic glass and fine ceramics market (annual sales) is estimated at $205 million this year, up 5% from last year.

The oldest porcelain factory in the country, the bankrupt IRIS Cluj-Napoca, has been recently bought by window maker Geromed Medias for $2 million.

On the other hand, the glass packaging (bottles and jars) production and the window output have sharply declined compared to the pre-1989 figures. tentu says the only bottle and jar productive facilities still operational are those in Sighisoara and Stirom Bucharest. The window production is handled by four centres: GES Boldesti Scaeni, Geromed Medias, Gecsat Tarnaveni and Gerom Buzau.

bogdan.neagu@zf.ro