From the outside, the small Heidi chocolate plant in Pantelimon, close to Bucharest, does not appear to have more than a few dozen employees. However, around 150 people work here in three shifts each day, and six days out of seven each week.
Laderach group, a family business started in Switzerland, a country famed for its chocolate, has developed the Heidi brand at a regional level with the aid of the plant on the Romanian market. From here, around 5-6% of total production goes to several East-European countries, a share the company wants to rapidly increase in the following years.
The high number of employees needed for production is explained by the method with which Heidi chocolate is made. Positioned on the premium segment, a significant part of pralines and chocolate figurines from the company's portfolio are manually produced.
Erwin Vondenhoff, the Dutchman who came to the helm of Heidi Chocolat Romania this August, says the Romanian plant is offering the company production costs similar to those of Switzerland.
Instead, one of the benefits of producing premium chocolate locally is the low cost of distribution, which direct rivals cannot have because they operate in Romania through imports. "We cannot consider relocating the plant in Pantelimon, because strategically it's located extremely close to Bucharest, which is our most important market," says Vondenhoff.
This year, Heidi invested 1m euros to upgrade some production lines and in the following period plans to modernise the offices on the same location and open a chocolate store at the plant's entrance.
On the other hand, one of the downsides of the location is the shortage of available workforce.
Dutch-born Erwin Vondenhoff replaced Konrad Hafner, former general manager and shareholder in Heidi Chocolat Romania. Once he withdrew from the company, Hafner also sold his 14.3% stake in Swiss group Laderach. The other two important shareholders, Massimo Palumbo (7.3%) and Johann Koller (12.3%) also departed, which allowed Laderach to boost its stake in the Romanian firm to 100% this year. The Laderach family thus became the only shareholder of Heidi, a company with turnover worth 11.6m euros last year and around 300 employees.
Vondenhoff says his firm aims to step up brand development and find some alternative distribution channels in the following period.
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