Titan bread plant sees profit up 76%

Titan milling and bakery industry producer, owned by LLI Austrian company, in the first half of this year registered revenues worth 115m RON (28m euros), down 25.67% from the same period of 2008, while net income surged by 76.6%, to 5.02m RON. “The plummeting turnover is reflected in prices, being just a minor reduction in total volumes,” Stefanos Krommydas, the company’s general manager, told ZF. He explained that net income growth was because of the focus on boosting business efficiency and not on volumes. “During this period, we did not operate any redundancies, on the contrary we have 70 employees more than in the previous period,” added Krommydas, who also said the firm had not dropped any of its operations since the start of the year. The company in H1 opened five stores, all located in Drumul Taberei district of Bucharest, as part of its move to expand the retail network by ten spaces this year. In 2008, Belforno retail network added seven stores and reached around 35 in early 2009. On medium term, the company plans to double its retail chain, to 70 stores. The majority stake in Titan, the former Loulis Romania, was in the summer of 2007 acquired by Austria’s LLI firm, controlled by Raiffeisen group. In 2008, LLI bought another 30% in Titan’s stock, now holding over 97% in the company.