The hot weather last week has given a strong boost to sales of soft drinks, air conditioning units, ice cream and beer, after slumps in the first six months of this year.
Sales of holiday packages for the Romanian seaside have doubled over the last ten days, with some resorts reaching maximum occupancy.
"Sales of Napolact ice cream have risen by 45% in the last two weeks, as compared to early July. The highest increases were registered on the segment of moulded stick ice cream, the sales of which depend a lot on the weather," said Gerbrand DeBoer, general manager of Friesland, the company that owns the majority stake in Napolact.
"It is not enough to say demand has doubled. It has risen by at least 100%, and the hotel is full," said Razvan Dobre, a representative of the Best Western Savoy Hotel in Mamaia.
He said that because of the heat, tourists coming to the seaside were looking for hotels with air conditioning and swimming pools.
Since July 18, when temperatures in the entire country began to rise, sales of holiday packages for the Romanian seaside have doubled compared with the previous week, say representatives of the National Association of Travel Agencies (Asociatia Nationala a Agentiilor de Turism: ANAT).
Retailers of electronics and home appliances also enjoyed strong growth in their sales of air conditioning units.
"Sales in air conditioning have more than doubled in recent days by comparison with the average level for June and July. The hot weather has pushed up demand, and consumers are requesting immediate installation," said Dan Ostahie, chairman of Altex, a major retailer of electronics and home appliances.
The immediate knock-on of this is higher electricity consumption.
Bottlers of mineral waters and soft drinks, among the strongest hit by the cool weather, need the high temperatures to last until the end of the summer in order to offset their earlier losses.
"Should this period of high temperatures continue, then we will be able to say that losses of the first half of the year can be offset," said Octavian Cretu, chairman of Romaqua and the Employer Association for the Romanian mineral water industry.
Brewers have reported strong sales growth and hope to make good the losses posted for the first half of the year.
"Compared with the first half of July, last week saw sales grow by 50%. While at the beginning we were selling 4,000 hectolitres per day, now we''re selling 6,000 hectolitres a day," says Virgil Mailat, the general manager of Bere Mures.
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