Romania’s Avi-Top invests €3m to grow poultry breeding capacity

12-Jul-2016 - Last updated on 13-Jul-2016 at 10:57 GMT

Avi-Top said it is investing money to increase chicken sales by 10%

Romanian poultry meat processor Avi-Top plans to invest more than €3m to boost its poultry breeding capacity by the end of 2016, according to senior company representatives.

“We aim to grow organically every year, step by step, by continuing to invest in our brand, from production to distribution,” Apostol Neculai, the founder of Romania’s SC Kosarom SA group which comprises Avi-Top and a number of other companies from the country’s meat industry, told local business daily Ziarul Financiar.

Higher sales

Last year, the meat industry player exceeded revenues of some RON 52m (€11.5m) which represented an increase of about 2% compared with a year earlier. Avi-Top currently has a poultry breeding capacity of some 6.5m head per year, and its slaughterhouse is fitted with a capacity of 4,000 head per hour, according to data from the Romanian firm.

“We plan to invest over €3m to increase our breeding capacity, and this year we aim to achieve a sales increase of more than 10% compared with a year earlier,” said Ciprian Postolache, the Romanian company’s sales director.

Domestic sales drive revenues

Avi-Top sells its products through a network of 30 stores in Romania and Moldova. Export sales are responsible for only 2% of the company’s sales, with the remaining 98% of revenues generated in the Romanian market. The majority of the retail outlets which sell Avi-Top’s output is located in Romania’s north-eastern region.

In 2015, the Romanian government decided to decrease VAT on meat and processed meat products from 24% to 9%. This has helped stimulate domestic demand for meat, including poultry, as well as combating tax evasion which has been plaguing the country’s meat industry.

Avi-Top is located in Romania’s Iași province in the north-east of the country, about 386km from the country’s capital Bucharest. Its product range comprises a wide range of poultry products, including poultry wings, fillets, breasts and other products marketed under the Avi-Top, Cinci Stele (Five Stars) and 1001 Specialitati (1001 Specialties) brands.

Avi-Top says its facilities are ISO 9001, 14001 and 22000 certified.

Kosarom operates a meat processing facility in Paşcani, also in the north-east. The plant is fitted with a slaughtering capacity of some 800 head per day, as well as a processing capacity of about 50 tonnes of pork meat per day. The Romanian firm was set up in 1992 through the privatisation of a state-owned meat processing plant.

Controlled by the Apostol family, Kosarom group is operated by a workforce of more than 1,100 employees and reported sales of about €50m for 2015.