Shmulik Porre, president and CEO of Tnuva Romania needed only one week to weigh the parent company’s proposal to take over the reins of the Romanian subsidiary. ”It was time to make a change in my career,” says Porre, who was general manager of the largest paint manufacturer in Israel for five years before accepting Tnuva’s job offer.

It’s been over a year since then, and, when looking at the progression of the company he is running, Porre has no reason to regret making this decision: Tnuva Romania boasted the fastest growth rate on the market in 2008, when it reached 20 million-euro sales. This being the first full fiscal year since the company’s products hit the stores, it was in a way natural for its progression to be more spectacular than that of other milk processors. Porre takes pride in having built a project from scratch on a very competitive and dynamic market, especially since he says he is expecting a 50% turnover growth this year. So far, he has been among the few to make such appraisals; the other dairy processors expect 1-2% rises on average for 2009, at least 4-5 times lower than in past years.

”We think the industry will go up this year, as well, but we don’t believe it will be a two-digit rise, like in previous years,” says Traian Simion, general manager of Albalact Alba Iulia, the only large processor listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. The dairy market approached 1.3 billion euros in 2008, with dairy products getting top billing in supermarkets and hypermarkets over the last few years. For many years, the market saw a two-digit annual rise, surpassing all growth rates on consumer goods market.

Now, companies anticipate that market moves have more to do with difficulties generated by the current situation, especially for small processors (which are faced with funding difficulties) than with anything else. Companies need to consolidate their position on an increasingly crowded market, with this year expected to be rich in transactions. For those that have businesses to sell, the timing is quite unfortunate, because the price has gone down significantly against the past few years, while buyers hold all the trump cards in negotiations and can afford to wait until a good deal comes along.

Traducere de Loredana Fratila-Cristescu si Daniela Stoican