US meat industry giant Smithfield, which has annual sales of 10 billion dollars, is in advanced talks for the acquisition of new assets on the Romanian market in the form of Prodaliment Salonta (Bihor). This comes after paying 33 million dollars (27 million euros) last year for the former pig breeding complex ComTim Timisoara.
"We are in talks with Smithfield to sell the majority stake after some months ago our attempt to sell a part of the assets failed," says Sandu Nicolae, the majority shareholder in Prodaliment Salonta, which owns two farms and a slaughterhouse in the region, including a cold meats plant.
Industry sources say the value of the transaction is likely to reach several million euros.
Smithfield also announced their interest in the raw-dried cold meats plant that Principal Construct Prahova (a former asset of the ComTim complex) owns in the region, but its majority stakeholder, Claudiu Ciuciureanu, has continually denied the existence of talks or having been contacted by representatives from Smithfield.
Bjarne Jakobsen, general manager of Agrotorvis SRL, the vehicle through which Smithfield bought ComTim assets, denied the existence of any deal but confirmed there existed interest in the assets of Salonta.
"We have made no acquisition in Salonta, but in Romania there are enough high-performing plants that could whet our appetite for an acquisition," says Jakobsen. The move, however, is creating confusion on the market, particularly since the Americans, in ComTim, already own the assets they are to buy in Salonta.
The only explanation provided by industry analysts is the extremely slow and long-lasting process entailed in the re-starting of a plant the size of ComTim and the Americans' wish to kick-start their activities on the Romanian market as soon as possible.
Smithfield already began hiring personnel for ComTim some months ago and announced, during an important delegation to Bucharest, that they had an investment plan of 350 million dollars.
Although in global terms Smithfield last year acquired 22% in Campofrio Alimentacion of Spain, which in Romania owns the cold meats producer Tabco-Campofrio (with deals worth 25 million euros in 2004), for the time being they do not have any joint plan with the Spanish for the Romanian market.
In Poland, for instance, the Americans and the Spanish have entirely separate businesses, with meat product brands and separate farms. Late last year, Smithfield paid the Spanish 50 million dollars for the majority stake they owned in Morliny.
At the time there were rumours that part of this sum had been earmarked for acquisitions on the Romanian market. stelian.negrea@zf.ro
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