Katrin Adt, CEO, Dacia: Dacia comes from Romania and will remain a very important pillar.
♦ How three Renault Group executives see Mioveni ♦ Katrin Adt, CEO, Dacia: «Romania is an essential pillar. It was not a decision against Romania, but one for competitiveness» ♦ Thierry Charvet, chief industry officer, Renault: «Costs have doubled. The trend is worrying».
The Dacia plant in Mioveni constantly produces almost 1,300 cars a day, operates at maximum capacity and has highly skilled people – but inflation, expensive energy and taxation in Romania are eroding its competitiveness. This is the summary of the messages sent by three top executives of the Renault group at the futuREady event on March 10, 2026, where ZF was present. The statements come amid confirmation that the new Dacia Striker, the brand's first C-segment model – a 4.62 meter family crossover – will be produced in Bursa, Turkey, not in Mioveni. Turkey thus becomes the fourth country that produces Dacia models, after Romania, Morocco and China. Katrin Adt, CEO of Dacia, wanted to emphasize that «Romania is very important and is an essential pillar for Dacia. Dacia comes from Romania and will remain a very important pillar». About the Striker decision, Katrin Adt explained: «When we decided for this machine, Mioveni had reached maximum capacity. There were other production locations where it was possible to include this machine. It was not a decision against Romania, but a decision for competitiveness and a decision for the whole group to exploit the existing assets as much as possible».
«Honestly, they manage to produce more than 1,000 cars a day, almost 1,300 a day, constantly. It is a very, very good production machine. The skills of the people are very high», added Thierry Charvet, chief industry & quality officer of the group, with concrete data about the industrial performance. But he warned that the real stake is cost base inflation: «Inflation has been the highest it's been in five years. Costs have doubled – the minimum wage, the cost of energy, they've all gone up. It can become a problem. The trend is worrying.» When asked about the CALVIN humanoid robots, Charvet said that they will first arrive in Western Europe and Korea, and at the Dacia factories – eventually, in a second phase. Advanced automation does not threaten Romania in the short term, but it does not come to solve the problem of costs either. Fabrice Cambolive, Chief Growth Officer and CEO of the Renault brand, was the most direct. When a journalist suggested that Mioveni needed a third project to secure his future, the response was short: «Guys, you need to cut costs.» Cambolive also admitted that Dacia had production problems in January-February due to the change of all engines in the range. The automotive industry in Romania ended 2025 with a decreasing turnover, from 34 to 32 billion euros, against the background of energy almost tripling compared to 2020 and the turnover tax that discourages investments. The two factories – Mioveni and Craiova – assembled 545,510 vehicles in 2025, 2.6% below the record from 2024, and in February 2026 Ford Otosan surpassed Dacia in monthly production with only 299 cars. The message from Paris is that Mioveni has good people and a reliable factory, but without competitive costs, the next new models go elsewhere.
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