Access to EU funds and contracts with foreign partners can aid the expansion of businesses selling and distributing apiary products both on the domestic market and on foreign markets, where sales are 4-5 times higher.
The idea of setting up a business that buys, bottles and sells bee honey domestically and abroad came to Mates Victor, the general manager of Apis Prod of Blaj while he was a beekeeper with just 25 families of bees, in 1992. He started the family business by manually bottling bee honey under the name of "Roua Florilor", a brand he later registered with the State Office for Inventions and Marks. He started the business with just two employees and now there are 42 people collecting, bottling and distributing honey. Investments were operated gradually, with the money raised from banking loans.
The partnership sealed with De Traay International BV, a Dutch management and technology investment company, in 2005, turned Apis Prod into a Romanian-Dutch joint venture.
As part of the partnership, the company received funds worth 700,000 euros from the Dutch firm for the acquisition of equipment in exchange for 40% of generated profit.
The company's manager says he found raw material suppliers countrywide through the beekeepers' associations he turned to and targeted customers are cash & carry networks, supermarkets, hypermarkets, hotel-restaurant-catering networks and medium-sized stores of Transylvania.
Domestic competition was not a drawback for Apis Prod because at the moment it was created, the business was the only producer and distributor.
Now, there are 8 companies competing on the retail market.
The much smaller honey demand in Romania against supplies made Victor look at foreign markets, where he wanted to make bulk deliveries.
Apis Prod registered turnover worth 3m euros in 2006, up 30% year-on-year. "This year, we want to maintain turnover at this level amid the 30-40% lower honey production in Romania against 2006," says Victor.
The business launched by Cornel Georgescu, the general manager of Apicola Pastoral Georgescu, has a similar story.
"At present, the company sells, under the Albina Carpatina registered trade mark, a range of 40 products. The products are mainly distributed to supermarkets, but also to pharmacies and natural products stores," says Raluca Georgescu, the commercial manager.
On the long term, Apicola Pastoral Georgescu wants to work with Romanian or foreign firms interested in selling its products on the domestic and foreign markets.
The business development is in full swing, with the company having derived a several thousand-euro turnover.
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