Romania: bread makers will face a new competitor

Bucharest / RO. (fro) Romanian bread makers will face a new competitor this autumn in the shape of Snack Bakeries, the bread-making arm of Bucharest-based Snack Attack food producer. The plans of Snack Attack, a sandwich maker and trader, are wider and they include franchising its name, floating on the stock exchange and attacking the bread market.

«Unlike the other competitors, we have our own original recipe for bread», say Snack Attack officials, arguing that the Snack Attack brand is strong enough to support the new brand Snack Bakeries. «We want to associate our bread with the sandwich brand», they say. The bread will be made at the company´s own bakery, built under a greenfield project almost completed, which was carried out on an investment of about five million EUR. According to «Financiarul» the bakery, located at Balostesi, near Bucharest City, will be rounded up with a logistics centre.

«This will be an extraordinary thing. Snack Attack will virtually join another league», Snack Attack Marketing Director Razavan Iancau told daily Ziarul financiar, adding that the big league of the bread makers includes the local makers with business turnovers of many tens of millions of Euro. The official remarks that these are not the only elements of the Snack Attack´s business strategy, which includes expanding the bread business to include the first ten Romanian cities in terms of economic potentials, in a first stage.

Iancau says that the next years might witness the floating of the company on the London Stock Exchange, while in the long run, the Snack Attack sandwiches might be traded abroad as well. The Snack Attack sandwich factory in Bucharest has a current capacity of 25’000 sandwiches a day.This year, the company´s turnover could reach ten million EUR, according to Iancau´s estimates.

In 2007, the company reported a business turnover of slightly over six million EUR and a net profit of 190’000 EUR. In June 2006, Snack Attack was awarded a HACCP certificate for food quality management and in 2007 it won a prize for the best sandwich maker outside the United Kingdom, after becoming a member of the British Sandwich Association following rigorous auditing (source).