E's and spices make up $10m sales

Talk about the negative effects food additives or E’s have started about a year ago, but it does not seem to have impacted on the sales of the companies in this field.
Ion Mos Prod Com SRL, which makes ingredients for the meat industry sold approximately $10 million’s worth last year, up 18% since 2001 in real terms.
The company makes spices, mixes, food additives, adjuvants, natural and artificial membranes. Its best-selling product is a soy protein used to improve salami, as the representatives of this market say, which accounts for 40% of the sales, followed by spice mixes – 21% of the sales. Ion Mos works with several major charcuterie producers such as Gourmet, Cris-Tim, Medeus and Angst.
“The talks about additives have in no way affected sales. They may have caused a temporary decrease in the charcuterie consumption, which cannot quantify. This kind of talk was useless because there are no solutions to get rid of the additives. On the contrary, additives are vital for people’s health,” the company representative Dragos Caragui said.
Ion Mos is planning to have revenues grow by 10 or 15% this year. Caragui grounded last year’s growth and the 2003 planned increase on “the investments and sales policy implemented in the previous years.” Last year’s investments include the completion of a storage facility taking up 1,000 sqm, which is used for product research and development.
The company is held by the Caragui Family and employs 48 people. It is headquartered in Bucharest and has branches in nine other cities. The name of the company is derived from the founder’s nickname. Its archrivals are Rolit and Darimex.
The talks and disputes about E’s did impress somebody at least. Christian Rey, CEO of chips producer Intersnack Romania last year said the chips market had been affected by the these discussions, which had caused his company to progress slower.
A Joint Order of the Health and Family Ministry and of the Agriculture Ministry stipulates that food additives are substances used to make foodstuffs,  “in order to improve their quality or allow the use of advanced processing technology.”
Food additives are included in several groups, with each of them assigned a code comprised of an E and three or four digits. There are more than 3,000 E’s at the moment.