The producer of the Caroli charcuterie products, the Lebanese-owned TC Affaires, took over one of the best known brands on the domestic charcuterie market, Gourmet, held by Gourmet Prod SRL.
The deal included the Gourmet brand, along with a production line and the product distribution logistics, the representatives of the two companies say, who did not care to disclose its exact value. Sources on the market say the transaction is estimated to one million euros.
"We sold the Gourmet brand to those at Caroli, but I cannot reveal the value of the transaction, " Mihai Lungu, Gourmet manager told Ziarul Financiar. Lungu founded Gourmet in 1993 but later sold it to an Austrian citizen, Johann Gierlinger.
Caroli posted some 23 million euro turnover last year, while Gourmet's revenues were worth roughly 3.5 million euros.
"We dropped charcuterie production because we had large distribution costs. We were unable to produce more than 200 tonnes of charcuterie products a month, so that we risked losing competitiveness on the market," Lungu explained.
TC Affaires president, Talal El Solh explained the decision to buy the Gourmet brand was heavily influenced by its awareness among consumers.
"It's a valuable brand," El Solh said. "As far as we know, it is the fourth on the market in this regard and at the same time the number one Romanian valuable brand. We intend to keep it as a premium brand and increase its market share," he added.
Gourmet was indeed the first company on the Romanian charcuterie market to have built a brand in the early '90s, when this concept was barely working its way into the vocabulary of the domestic managers. In the course of time, however, the entry of more and more producers on the market, along with a lack of investment and distribution flaws, as the founder of the company Mihai Lungu himself admitted, Gourmet's fame began to fade.
Lungu quitting his position at the top of the company contributed to that, too. He shifted focus to either "global" issues, filling the state secretary position with the Agriculture Ministry for a while, or to other industries like sugar or swine breeding. He gradually sold his Gourmet stake, so that the Austrian investor remained the sole shareholder by the end of last year.
Fully aware of the difficult time Gourmet was having, Gierlinger called Lungu back to run the company in order to revitalise it by a five-year contract with stock options depending on the performance. Lungu promised last fall when he took the reigns again that he would either turn the company around in one year or resign.
claudia.covaci@zf.ro ; stelian.negrea@zf.ro
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