India’s IBS Synergies to invest US$150m in Romanian poultry industry

Under the plan, the firm is to set up a new hatchery, slaughterhouse and a poultry meat processing plant in an undisclosed location in Romania. The investment is expected to create more than 500 new jobs, according to the investor.
 
To discuss the planned investment in Romania, A S Bindra, the Indian company’s chief executive, met in mid-November with Alexandru Năstase, Romania’s State Secretary for Foreign Investment and Public-Private Partnership, the state-run Department for Infrastructure Projects and Foreign Investment (DPIIS) said in a statement.
 
The November meeting indicated that the investment was likely to secure state funds under a private-public partnership formula. The amount of the potential government support for IBS was not disclosed in the statement. The project “will cover the entire technological chain… up to marketing of the end-product”​, the state-run department said.
 
IBS Synergies said its Romanian poultry investment would be enabled with a capacity of about 30m head per year.
 
Global meat projects​
 
Based in Chandigarh, India, IBS Synergies was set up in 2010. The firm said it was a leading company in the fields of export-import and project development in India, and it is part of the multi-industry IBS group.

IBS is involved in various agricultural projects worldwide. In addition to the planned poultry investment in the Romanian market, this includes its poultry project in Abu Dhabi with a designed capacity of 30m head per year, as well as various projects in Africa, such as a poultry and feed project in Mozambique, and production of beef meat in Ethiopia and Sudan, according to the firm. IBS said it was also involved in commodities trade, including corn, rice and wheat.
 
On a related note, local observers said there had been an intensification in investments in Romania’s meat industry since the country’s parliament decided to reduce the value-added tax (VAT) on meat and processed meat products from the previous rate of 24% to 9%. The measure was implemented last August, drawing from the government’s prior experience with the VAT on products in the Romanian baking industry, which was also reduced in 2013.
 
Currently, the country’s meat market is estimated to be worth some €3.2bn, of which as much as €1.5bn is believed to be generated by sales outside the formal economy. The VAT measure was intended by the government as a mean of combating large-scale tax evasion by the country’s meat industry.