Beverage producer Alexandrion Group is planning to invest some $3m in a wine distillery this year, which it intends to use to make the Alexandrion brandy.
To that end, it is also planning to buy an at least 1,000 ha vineyard.
The group's plans include beginning exports to ten countries "with a larger population than Romania's," Nawaf Salameh, the group's shareholder and administrator told Ziarul Financiar.
"We used to buy the wine distillate from the Romanian market and from Greece, but we decided to begin a separate investment to allow us to make this distillate," Salameh said.
He added the investment was already 50% completed. The construction works, undertaken by the Greek company Balafas would be completed by late August, Salameh specified.
"The entire investment, construction, equipment and everything else this distillery needs, will amount to no more than four million dollars," he said. The group used to make vodka and brandy at its Ploiesti-based facility.
Salameh added the group was also in talks over the acquisition of a vineyard in the Prahova or Buzau area. This project is still under negotiation for the time being, yet Salameh said the group would not buy anything less than 1,000 hectares.
"We invest in Romania in the long term and we try to build an integrated system, so that we will eventually come to have a factory for each of the raw materials we use," he explained.
Alexandrion's investments this year should reach no more than $5 million and will include exports and hiring 300 people, besides the distillery.
All this in addition to the marketing and advertising investments to promote the brands in its portfolio, which amount to four or five million dollars a year. Alexandrion's rate-card advertising investments reached $9.3 million.
The company posted about $60 million (2,000bn ROL) turnover last year, twice the 2001 turnover, Salameh said. The main sales increase factors were the sustained advertising campaigns and expansion of the distribution network.
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