The ten million-euro investments that the cold cuts producer Aldis Calarasi wants to make next year could be pushed back, unless the company gets funding from banks for half of its programme.
"We are concerned because we do not know whether banks finance us or not. We have already consulted structural funds, and our project is eligible but we need banks to guarantee such funding. We are currently in talks with Banca Comerciala Romana and Unicredit Tiriac to get a line of credit," said Gheorghe Naghi, the company's majority shareholder and general manager.
More precisely, in order to access structural funds, Aldis needs to prove it has sufficient funds to make these investments, that is five million euros. In the absence of such funds, the producer needs a bank loan, of which it will give half back to the bank upon completion of investment (the amount reimbursed by structural funds), with the rest of the money to be repaid as any other bank loan.
The producer started construction of a swine farm of 15,000 head in the first half of this year, an investment worth five million euros, which was supposed to become operational in the first half of next year. Aldis officials have already started construction of this farm, and will contribute approximately three million euros of their own money for the investment required by construction.
"We slowed down the pace of construction at the swine farm, because only after banks have agreed to guarantee the loans will we be able to access the structural funds," said Daniel Dumitrescu, the company's marketing manager.
Out of the loan, two million euros will go to the completion of the farm, and the remaining three million will go to building grain silos with a 12,000 tonne storage capacity. Furthermore, Aldis officials intend to allocate two million euros of their own funds for the farming business of the group.
"Aldis invested approximately three million euros in the acquisition of machinery and equipment this year alone," Dumitrescu says.
Aldis officials anticipate to end the year with slower than budgeted turnover growth, 10%, compared with the results of 2007, and blame this on the very high increases in the prices of imported meat and finished products, by 10 to 20% depending on product.
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