20.04.2021
JUMBO OPENS 11 NEW STORES IN ROMANIA
Greek toy retailer Jumbo will open at least 11 new stores in Romania over the next five years, expanding its network to 25 stores.
This year, the retailer aims to open a new 12,500-square-meter hypermarket in the southern city of Craiova and launch its online store, according to its 2020 financial report, quoted by SeeNews. For 2022, Jumbo has set a goal to open two new stores in Romania.
The company, which generates an annual turnover of 150m euros, reported a gross profit of 84.4m euros in Romania in 2020, up from 75.4m euros a year earlier.
Jumbo's sales in Romania represent about 24.51% of the group's turnover in 2020. The Romanian market generates 31.4% of the company's total profit before taxes, financial and investment results.
The company is investing 35m euros in its first warehouse in Romania, which covers an area of 75,000 square meters.
At the end of 2020, Jumbo had nearly 1,500 employees in 14 hypermarkets in Bucharest, Timisoara, Oradea, Arad, Ploiesti, Pitesti, Constanta, Suceava, Bacau, Braila and Brasov.
The company operates 80 stores in Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania and two online stores in Greece and Cyprus at the end of 2020.
Continental is investing 300m euros in Romania
German carmaker Continental has invested 150m euros in Romania in 2020 and plans to invest the same amount this year.
Key investments last year included a new office building for the Timisoara R&D center and the completion of an extension to the Iasi office building, a Continental statement quoted SeeNews as saying.
In 2020, the company installed a new trigeneration system at its electronic components factory in Timisoara and upgraded equipment at its tire plant in the Romanian city. Funds have also been invested in the renovation of its engineering center and electronic components factory in Sibiu, as well as the ContiTech factories in Karei, Nadab and Timisoara.
Continental has over 20,000 employees in engineering centers and production facilities in Romania. They work in international teams on key trends in the automotive industry: connectivity, autonomous driving and electric mobility, using artificial intelligence and large databases.
All 5 divisions of the company are represented in Romania. Continental has 7 manufacturing plants and 4 engineering centers in Timisoara, Sibiu, Carey, Nadab, Brasov and Iasi. The German company is a partner in two joint ventures in Iasi and Slatina and has a tire distribution center in the capital, Bucharest.
Continental has more than 230,000 employees and is the fourth largest tire manufacturer in the world with tens of billions of euros in annual turnover. The company also manufactures braking systems, internal electronics, automotive safety, chassis drives and components, tachographs, tires and other parts for the automotive and transportation industries. Its customers are all major manufacturers of cars, trucks and buses.
Ford produces a new car in Romania every 67 seconds
Ford expects record daily car production at its plant in Romania this year, with only 67 seconds needed to produce each of the new cars.
More than 1,000 Puma and EcoSport vehicles will be assembled every day at the company's factory in Craiova. This means that a new car will come off the assembly line every 67 seconds, Ford Romania said in a statement quoted by SeeNews.
Ford's engine plant will also reach a new record of about 1,700 engines produced per day. The company is currently assembling three versions of the one-liter EcoBoost unit in Craiova.
From October 2019, Ford's Romanian factory is assembling two compact SUVs - Ford EcoSport and the new Ford Puma.
SUVs are still the fastest growing segment in Europe. A total of 5.9 million SUVs were registered in 2019, an increase of 10% compared to 5.4 million units registered in 2018, according to Ford.
The new Ford Puma is already available in all European markets where the company is present, and from the first half of this year the model, assembled in Craiova, will be exported to Australia - the first vehicle made in Romania to be sold in this market.
Ford has invested more than 1.5 billion euros in Craiova since 2008, reaching a total of 6,300 employees in the two factories - for car assembly and for engines.
About 3400 of the employees in question have been hired in the last 3 years to support the production of the new EcoSport and Puma models. As the production of both models is constantly increasing, the employees of the car assembly plant in Craiova for the first time worked in 3 shifts.
On February 26, 2021, Ford shut down production at its Craiova plant for eight days due to a shortage of semiconductors worldwide. "During the eight days that production has stopped, employees at Ford's Craiova plant will be paid according to agreements between the company and the unions, taking into account current legislation," said company spokeswoman Anna Maria Timis. in February, Labor Minister Raluca Turcan announced that Romanian carmaker Dacia, part of France's Groupe Renault, had stopped production for three days for the same reason.
