Romanian meat group buys poultry player in €4m deal

Under the plan, Carmistin Group aims to relaunch the insolvent company’s poultry farms and meat processing facilities with an investment worth about €20m. The funds will be used to overhaul and upgrade the facilities of Avi Instant, which filed for insolvency. Since then, some of the company’s assets have been degraded and their production capacities require to be restored, according to senior group representatives.  

Investment plans​

As part of the project to restore its production capacities in the province of Gorj, in Romania’s south-western region, Carmistin Group aims to relaunch Avi Instant’s first farms in spring 2018, and modernise the remaining facilities owned by the company by the end of next year.

“Once the technological overhaul of the poultry platform in Târgu Jiu is completed, Avirom, a company that is part of Carmistin Group, will employ 600 employees there​,” Iustin Paraschiv, owner of Carmistin Group, told local business daily Ziarul Financiar​.

Târgu Jiu is the capital of the Gorj province, and is located about 280km west of Bucharest

The group acquired Avi Instant through its subsidiary Avicarvil. In 2016, the latest year for which data is available, Avi Instant posted revenues of about RON 540,000 (€118,000), and generated a loss of more than RON 430,000 (€94,000). At that time, a workforce of 22 employees operated the company.

Last year, Avicarvil posted revenues of some RON171m (€37.4m), and a net profit of about RON4.5m (€980,000). The company has some 668 employees.

In 2008, Carmistin Group took over Avicarvil through the privatisation of the assets of Romania’s leading chemical company Oltchim. Since then, Carmistin Group has developed poultry farms and related facilities fitted with a total slaughtering capacity of more than 10 million head per year.

Sales to rise​

The Romanian meat business posted revenues of about €120m last year, and its management hopes to further raise its revenues to some €135m in 2017. This would represent a robust increase of 12.5% compared with a year earlier. 

Carmistin Group operates several businesses in the meat processing and agri-food sectors. These include poultry breeder Avicarvil, meat processor Ana și Cornel, feed producer and cattle farmer Pajo Holding, slaughterhouse Ladrisi, pig breeder Porcellino Grasso, as well as other companies. In neighbouring Hungary, Carmistin Group owns a subsidiary, Frigo Érd Kft, which stores and sells its products.

The Romanian group says it sells its processed poultry, pork and beef meat products under its own brands, including La Provincia and NaturAvi, and supplies its products to various major retail chains as a private-label producer. In addition to this, Avicarvil operates its own retail stores, operating under the brands of La Provincia, Ana și Cornel, and Abatorul de la Ceptura, concentrated in the country’s southern and eastern provinces, according to data from the firm.