Romania's sixth-largest brewer, Bere Mures, which has gained a foothold on the market with PET beer, has decided to branch out into the hotel market.
Having decided to invest 3 million euros, the company will launch, at the end of next summer, the Germisara tourism complex of Geoagiu Bai resort, which was acquired this year for about 600,000 euros.
"We want to turn the hotel into a three-star accommodation unit, both for our employees and for tourists, because we feel tourism is a business with solid future perspectives. The hotel has been closed over the last two years because it had become unusable," says Grec Gheorghe, one of the six shareholders in Bere Mures.
The hotel industry has lately attracted investors from other fields. For instance, Romanian-owned food products distribution company De Silva Intermed and IT company IT Geosoft International have in their turn invested in Bucharest-based hotels this year.
Projections related to Bere Mures sales for 2004 point to about 50 million euros, 42% higher as compared to the previous year, when they stood at 29 million euros.
The company's sales will exceed for the first time this year the 1 million-hectolitre mark (as compared to 835,000 hectolitres in 2003), at a production capacity of 1.1 million hectolitres.
In the first 11 months, sales reached almost 950,000 hectolitres, as compared to 775,000 hectolitres during the similar period of last year. "This year's increase comes amid an improved retail system and higher beer quality. This has been our best year in the ten years since we've started brewing beer," says Grec. Bere Mures brews Neumarkt, Graf Dracula (black beer) and Sovata beer brands. stelian.negrea@zf.ro
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