A young engineer from Hunedoara abandoned his basic trade and started a business in Brad. His company is the only in the county producing cardboard packaging.
Eugen Tace worked with Hunedoara steel mill for ten years. He graduated Engineering Faculty in 1996 and as he failed to find employment as an engineer in the steel mill after graduation, he resigned.
This is when he thought to start his own business. Two years ago, when he arrived in Iasi, Tace eyed a workshop manufacturing cardboard boxes.
He realised that the activity was not very complicated, did not need high investments, while the demand on the domestic market was quite high. As he lacked the money, he put off the project for a while.
He got a credit of 50 million lei in 2000, in accordance with the Law 1/1991 regarding the loans granted to the unemployed, he added 50 million lei from his own resources and founded Magnis TA & CO, based in Baia de Cris. The company manufactures cartons and collects paper and cardboard waste.
The 100 million lei were used to buy the equipment necessary for the production and the raw material for the first batch of boxes, while the rest of the money was used for refurbishing the space where the operations were carried.
The building had previously been a milk-collection centre and the rain pouring through the roof had damaged it. Eugen Tace, in his position as administrator of Magnis TA & CO, is now thinking to buy and upgrade it.
The first order of 100 boxes had to be ready in three days. He bought cardboard worth 3 million lei, he paid 1.6 million lei for the shipment and, together with his three employees, he managed to fill the order.
As he noticed that large boxes were especially demanded in Transilvania, he thought he could start making them. Some 4,000 boxes are produced in the small plant of Tace every month, while the monthly turnover of the company stands at 100 million lei.
The cardboard boxes are delivered to four beneficiaries in the county and to one from Bucharest.
The company works together with Deva-based Polidava Company, which manufactures packaging in addition to its printing business. Tace's company sends orders to Polidava, when they cannot fill them and, in exchange, receives other orders from the Deva-based company.
Eugen Tace is planning to hire more workers to be able to cope with the increasing number of orders he receives. "I have orders for a monthly production of 25,000 cartons," the administrator says.
He wants to hire 6-10 more workers through the programme carried out by the National Agency for Developing and Implementing the Programmes for the Reconstruction of Mining Areas (ANDIPRZM) with the support of the World Bank or through a Phare programme financed by BCR.
If Tace buys state-of-the-art equipment, a machine whose productivity is 1000 times higher, the company will cover 60% of the cardboard box demand in Hunedoara County.
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