Dorin Mateiu, owner of Elit Cugir, the largest charcuterie producer in Transylvania, with turnover worth over 50 million euros, says making employees redundant would be a measure of last resort if sales started to decline again. "Prices of raw materials have gone up over the last two weeks, but we prefer to reduce our margins rather than increase prices. For the time being we are not operating any cost-cutting measures, because there are none to be operated any more, and we don't want to cut the number of employees," Mateiu said. The company has over 1200 employees. Elit Cugir, one of the top-ten charcuterie producers in the Romanian industry had operating margins of over 13% both in 2007 and in 2006, while the margins of its main rivals range between 3 and 8%. The producer has yet to reveal its results for 2008. "Elit posted a 7% sales increase in terms of volume and a 17% turnover rise against the first quarter of last year. However, the profit was not very significant because we had a 2% margin. I hope we will see an upward trend in the next few months, as well," Mateiu added. The Alba-based producer is not the only one whose profit has been affected in the first few months of this year, with CrisTim posting a one million-euro loss in this period.
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