Romania's Teraplast Doubles Annual PVC Pipes Output Capacity to 22,000 T

Teraplast has spent 4.24 million euro ($5.6 million) to move its PVC pipe production to a new facility in Saratel, it said in a statement. Teraplast has added two new production lines to the four existing ones.

The PVC pipe production was moved from Teraplast’s industrial platform in the town of Bistrita, in nortwestern Romania. The new facility also integrates a PVC warehouse covering an area of 2.4 hectares.

“The relocation to Saratel will generate multiple advantages for the company, one of the most important being the cut in personnel costs by some 20%, integration of the production fluxes, as well as reduction of the time for loading the final production by 30%,” Ioan Galea, Teraplast’s deputy director general, said in the statement.

In mid-November Teraplast will also move to Saratel its PVC granules production, whose daily production capacity will increase to 50 tonnes from 28 tonnes.

Teraplast sees this year’s net profit rising to some 22 million lei from 16.3 million lei in 2007. Its consolidated net profit rose by some 23% to 10.65 million lei in the first half of this year.

Teraplast floated 20% of its shares on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB) in April. The IPO was 3.6% oversubscribed and fetched 49.6 million lei. The company's stock last traded 1.64% down at 0.6 lei at 1056 GMT on Tuesday.

Teraplast is majority shareholder in two Romanian companies - plastic pipes maker Politub and thermo-insulating sandwich panel producer Plastsistem, which are not listed on the BVB.

(1 euro = 0.2751 Romanian lei)