Heidi, the Swiss producer of sweets, by this fall will conclude the investment programme allowing it to double the productive capacity of its Bucharest-based plant. The construction of a factory located in Voiteg, Timisoara producing powder milk will be concluded over this period, as well. The investments amount to about 1.3 million dollars.
Each of the two investments is worth some 650,000 dollars. The powder milk factory is built in order to cut the production costs. "We haven't found a supplier on the domestic market to provide us with this product at a constant quality so far, while the imported powder milk is more expensive," Konrad Hafner, general manager of Heidi told Ziarul Financiar.
The powder milk plant will hire 10-15 workers and its processing capacity will stand at 5,000 litres per hour. The output will be entirely used as raw material for chocolate.
"The fact that the market is not "open", may be a shortcoming, but, at least for the time being, we use the entire amount of powder milk. If we keep growing at the same pace as we have so far (the annual doubling of the production, i.e.), I think we will not have any milk in stock," Hafner said.
The company registered some 2 million dollars in H1 turnover, up 50% against the year ago period. The estimations for this year aim at more than 6 million dollars in turnover, as, according to the company's representatives, the fall and the winter are peak seasons for consumption of chocolate and chocolate products.
The company registered more than 4 million dollars in turnover last year, which is double against the previous year, when the company's sales stood at 2 million dollars, Hafner specified.
Heidi plans to launch a new series of products-luxury pralines, which will be mainly aimed at export to countries such as Switzerland, USA and Japan- "countries where the population has a high purchasing power and can afford to buy luxury products," the company's officials said.
Whereas Heidi had not promoted its products by powerful marketing campaigns until early this year, because supply was lower than demand, the company is now planning to launch a powerful campaign to promote Heidi brand this fall.
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