Few meat processing companies in Central and Eastern Europe are currently able to export their products to West-European markets, since investments worth hundreds of thousand dollars are needed to meet European Union norms.
Thus, only one of ten Polish meat industrialisation plants is in line with European Union norms, according to Polish deputy Agriculture minister Robert Gmyrek, quoted by Reuters, while in Romania the situation is at least as bad.
According to the Polish official, two thirds of the 4,000 meat industrialisation plants can hardly even abide by Polish standards. A multitude of small meat producers are mainly involved. The 21 large plants currently authorised to export to EU countries are controlling about 70 percent of the Polish meat production market. Gmyrek states that all Polish meat producers will be able to meet European norms by year 2003, when Poland wants to join the European Union.
Poland is the fourth European pork producer and the sixth world pork producer.
Though in Romania no qualitative evaluation of meat industrialisation plants has been made as yet, the situation is similar to that of Poland as regards the observance of European Union norms, according to the chairman of the Romanian Meat Association, Mihai Lungu. For plants to be in line with these norms, serious investments are needed, standing at two-three hundred thousand dollars per plant, he told Ziarul Financiar.
The biggest problem is environment protection, says Lungu, but also the organisation of certain production flows, so that the flow of raw material should not intersect that of finite products or wastes. In Romania there are almost 100 enterprises developing their activities within the meat domain: slaughterhouses, meat product enterprises, animal breeding enterprises.
The deputy chairman of the Federation of Trade Unions within the Food Industry Dragos Frumosu says that the number of employees within the domain, which at present does not exceed 15,000, accounts for only 15 percent of the number existent in 1990.
"The only chance for enterprises within the domain to adjust to EU norms is that they should operate exports and thus, get money for investments", the trade union leader considers. Meanwhile however, due to large debts they have accumulated, some slaughterhouses such as Glina or Fagaras were closed down by the syndic judge.
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