♦ Florin Pogonaru, the president of the Romanian Business Association: «In us, 70% of the assets are controlled, not held, by foreign companies. There are still 30% of the assets that are controlled by companies with Romanian capital. Thus, beyond the appearance that Hungary has a lower capital, we compare almost all of Hungary to 30% of Romania.» A young company in Hungary managed to capture the Romanian market after buying one of the most popular Romanian dairy brands. Bonafarm, founded in 2009, took over Napolact and Romanian factories in which this brand with roots in Transylvania, from the Dutch group FrieslandCampina, which leaves Romania. Bonafarm is an integrated group owned by the richest man in Hungary, Sandor Csanyi, president of OTP Bank. It produces from cereals and feed to milk and meat, and Romania was a target for expanding on the regional market. «In the Romanian market, profit is made. That is why the Hungarian companies, which covered the national market, smaller than ours, were forced to get out of it. You will ask yourself: but with Poland, why does it come to us? There is a large market, the profit margin is large enough, but we also have a risk, and they have a risk, New agents were in '90. In agriculture, although Romania is in the top 5 producers of wheat, corn, sunflower and soy, cereals and oils that also reach animal feed, Hungarian companies get to buy milk producers in Romania, and milk and cheese means agriculture with added value. In addition, Romania even has a deficit in this sector and could have been an opportunity for Romanian entrepreneurs. «The Romanian business has a disability: it is not directed to added value, assumption and innovation. Now we are in a maturation phase, but we are still behind Poland and Hungary,» said Pogonaru. Bonafarm is not the only company in Hungary to make strategic movements in Romania. Last week, East Grain, a cereal trading company in Cluj County, announced that he had bought Maragro, a cereal producer in Timiş, who works 9,000 hectares. East Grain is controlled by former Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš, but also by Hungarian investors, through the Investment Fund Holde Capital, a fund with capital of 400 million euros. In fact, the Holde group is still active locally and in the meat production through the brand of Crăieşti, and fodder, with the UBM factory in Mures county.
Pogonaru also explained that in Romania and the privatizations with foreign capital were quite intense, which influences the current movements in the market. «In us, 70% of the assets are controlled, not owned by foreign companies. There are still 30% of the assets that are controlled by companies with Romanian capital. Thus, the size, beyond the appearance that the Romanian companies have a smaller capital, compare with the local capital in Hungary. That is, we compare almost all Hungary with 30% of the Romanian power.» Thus, Hungary is a country with 9.5 million inhabitants and an economy half compared to ours, its companies are much larger than ours and swallow them. For example, MOL, the largest company in Bulgaria, active in energy, has a turnover of 23.3 billion euros in 2023, while OMV Petrom, the largest company in Romania, had a turnover of 7 billion in 2023. Even though it adds OMV Petrom Marketing, which made 4.7 billion euros in 2023, does not reach the level of the leader.
In energy, the MOL group in Hungary is a major player in Romania. In fact, another large group in the neighboring country is preparing to enter the energy and gas market, MVM, by taking over the E.ON Romania from the German group that owned the company so far. At the same time, in the last five years, at least five important transactions in Real Estate had Hungarian capital. Now, with the last entrance, of Bonafarm in the Romanian dairy market, Hungary shows that it has an increasing appetite for the local market, and the Romanian food industry, once dominated by Western multinationals, begins to reconfigure.
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