Coca-Cola HBC Romania has decided to close the carbonated soft drinks plant in Bucharest where it is currently employing 122 people. It will turn this plant into a storage facility. The two bottling lines in Bucharest, with a total capacity of 663,000 litres a day would be transferred to the plant in Ploiesti by the end of July, the company announced.
The Coca-Cola bottler for the Romanian market had to choose from boosting the capacity of the plant in Bucharest, which was not enough to meet the demand of the city and of the surrounding areas, and transferring the facility to Ploiesti, where it has a larger production capacity.
The Coca-Cola HBC representatives explained the decision was a way to streamline operations.
"We are constantly looking for solutions to improve the efficiency of the production infrastructure to be able to become even more competitive and ensure long-term sustainability of the Coca-Cola HBC business on the Romanian market," Calin Dragan, general manager of Coca-Cola HBC Romania stated. Coca-Cola HBC invested in a new carbonated soft drinks bottling line last year, which has a capacity of 63,000 litres an hour, recently installed at the location in Ploiesti.
The location in the industrial zone of Bucharest also hosts the offices of Coca-Cola HBC Romania. The company plans to transfer part of the employees to a rented office building in the city.
The Coca-Cola bottler is not the only company to have decided to transfer production from the Capital to another part of the country, although environment protection regulations do not require it.
Cost cutting and the concentration of operations into a single location outside Bucharest, which is trying to move the industry away from the centre, are the motivations of consumer goods manufacturers like Bunge and Heineken.
US-based Bunge decided in mid 2005 to close the vegetable oil factory Muntenia Bucharest, explaining it planned to improve efficiency of its operations. A year before, the local branch of Heineken had decided to close the Grivita brewery in Bucharest, and relocate the production of some brands to the other four centres it held in the rest of the country.
Coca-Cola HBC intends to consolidate its operations in Ploiesti.
"The factory in Ploiesti provides opportunities to expand the bottling and storage activities thanks to its location, and thus allows us to optimise the operations," stated Mugurel Radulescu, Coca-Cola HBC's communication manager.
The entire 122 staff of the plant in Bucharest "has been offered employment in Ploiesti and we want them to agree to transfer to Ploiesti," Radulescu said.
The company announced it would offer redundancy packages to all those employees of the plant in Bucharest that will refuse to transfer to Ploiesti or other positions with Coca-Cola HBC Bucharest.
Coca-Cola HBC Romania posted 18% growth in the sales volume last year, to a total of 873.6 million litres. It has more than 3,000 employees and is currently operating seven plants in six cities: Bucharest, Ploiesti, Iasi, Timisoara, Oradea and Vatra Dornei.
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