“The situation is not desperate, but it is not balanced considering investments made. Every year, we invest some €25 million in agricultural production alone. The agricultural producer is forced to sell his production for ridiculously low prices, middlemen come to the roads and buy by the truckloads, which results in fiscal evasion,” Porumboiu told Business Standard.
The businessman had a production of 100,000 tons of wheat this year, lower than the 140,000 tons registered last year, due to drought, which caused losses of up to 42 percent of production.
Thus, Porumboiu focuses his development strategy in 2009 on the processing segment, considering that grain exports will slide to 20 percent from 50 percent in 2008.
“My advantage is that, within the group, I have industrialization and processing units, and everything we get from agricultural production is turned into final products, automatically gaining added value, and we compensate for part of the losses. When the grain market goes bad, I can rely on the group’s milling and baked goods units [Ed. n. – Mopan], on the milk processing unit [Ed. n. – Ilvas Vaslui], and on the edible oil and biodiesel production [Ed. n. – Ulerom],” Porumboiu added.
