May 24 (SeeNews) - Romanian investment and management platform for troubled companies ROCA said on Thursday it signed an agreement to invest in local honey producer and exporter Tremot.
ROCA said in a statement its investment comes to solve the financial difficulty of the company and will support the development of Tremot in new areas such as retail and HoReCa, it said in a press release.
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"We have earned our internal and external customers by selling high quality, true food-medicinal beekeeping products. ROCA is exactly the solution we needed now but also to grow in the future," Tremot founder and owner Traian Dobre said in the same statement.
Romania ranks 4th in honey production in the EU, with an annual output in the range between 24,000 tonnes to 35,000 tonnes, depending on weather conditions, ROCA said. Also, Romanian honey is highly appreciated both on the EU market and in Asian countries, it added.
Tremot is selling its products mainly in European markets such as Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Austria, Poland. Outside of the EU, Tremot is selling in the USA, China, Japan, Indonesia, Singapore, Jordan.
"From the very beginning we set out as a business strategy that 30% of our investments would be in the agri-food sector. This opportunity to save a company of tradition facing difficulties offers us many development options. ROCA will support both the growth of honey export activity and retail and HoReCa development with the range of natural products under its own brand, conventional and BIO," ROCA CEO Rudolf Vizental said.
Tremot Dobre and Fii was set up in 1992, and currently has a honey processing capacity of approximately 3,000 tonnes per year. The company collects honey from some 2,000 beekeepers.
Tremot is ROCA's third investment, alongside the S-Karp brand, a shoe manufacturer based in the central city of Brasov, and Frigotehnica, a local leader in commercial and industrial cold technology.
ROCA was launched in March this year and is the first investment and management platform dedicated to Romanian companies in financial distress.
Analyses by ROCA specialists have found that Romania has some 11,000 companies with assets of over one million euro in need of investors.