The Agricover business grows in spite of the crisis

The Agricover group, the largest supplier of agricultural products, services, technical consultancy and financing for farmers and the processing industry, registered net sales worth RON 345.5 million (some €80.55 mln) in the first nine months of this year, up 25 percent year-on-year.


This increase was mainly due to its grain distribution division, Agricover Distributie, which posted the highest growth rate in business, of 57 percent, followed by the grain and oily seed plants, Agricover Cereale (12 percent).

“We were favoured by the fact that the need of farmers and processing companies for a financially solid partner, to ensure continuity of deliveries, has increased in this period. Moreover, revenues per client have risen, due to increasingly more farmers clients of one Agricover division beginning to appreciate the advantages of having all products and solutions ‘under one umbrella’ and expanding their business to the rest of the group’s divisions,” the Agricover group’s General Manager, Robert Arsene, said.

In an attempt to adjust to the current economic environment, the Agricover group applied a strategy for raising revenues by developing its client portfolio and gaining market share, cutting operating expenses by restructuring staff and reducing other fixed expenses, such as rents, which were renegotiated. As a result, the company’s profit surged 24 percent annually in the first nine months of this year, to RON 17.7 mln from RON
14.3 mln.

“Any economic crisis brings a series of difficulties and troubles, but also various business opportunities, of which companies with a solid base can take advantage to expand their business on segments on which they already activate or on new ones. As far as we are concerned, the Agricover group continued to grow organically on its traditional business segments, and to expand operations to other markets, as the crisis provided us with opportunities which fitted very well into our development strategy,” Arsene added. (Business Standard)