Iasi inspires you!, a ZF project supported by Banca Transilvania. What is the story…

♦ Every Tuesday, from 4:00 p.m., entrepreneurs and executives from the “capital” of Moldova and the surrounding area come to tell stories in the show “Iași inspires you!” about how the city and the area have developed recently, but also about what still needs to be done for a harmonious growth.

The businessman Florin Dobrea founded the Rodotex group 26 years ago. Initially, he started out with an advertising production company. In the meantime, it developed its activity in the area of ​​packaging production and in that of signage, reaching today a portfolio consisting of 650 clients from various fields, from the production of medicines to the food industry and from retail to the hotel industry.

“I have been an entrepreneur for 26 years. I founded the initial company in my third year of college. I think I was very lucky to have lived, including before ’89, among semi-capitalists, my father being the technical director of the Rifil spinning mill, a Romanian-Italian joint venture. Indirectly, this encouraged me in my subsequent endeavor”, he says.

He remembers seeing their entrepreneurial spirit, the way they saw the acquisition of machinery, the construction of technological flows.

“Basically, I’m a textile engineer, and Rifil is a spinning mill. As an entrepreneur, I moved, at least initially, to the area of ​​advertising, advertising print, signage, signage for advertising. It’s a field parallel to that of textiles, but similar in terms of machinery”, adds Florin Dobrea. He was present in the show Iasi te inspiră!, a ZF project supported by Banca Transilvania.

It started on the road in the print area, but in the meantime the group developed in two directions. Now, Rodotex has two divisions, two distinct factories as an object of activity. One does printing and packaging.

“We work a lot for the pharmaceutical industry, but we also have other clients in the packaging area. We also have a second division, that of signage, where we work for some of the biggest companies in Europe. Moreover, for five years, we have had the license for the more than 30 brands of the Hilton group, and this in 40 countries.”

He made the first million euros in turnover after seven years of activity. But over time, he believes there were many good moments.

“Because we are in Moldova, we have always been marginalized from the point of view of business and development. But, at the same time, we had the opportunity, being in a disadvantaged area, to benefit from European funds. We accessed them fully and as long as we could.”

In the last 15 years, the group has accessed 5-6 million euros. Without them he would not be where he is today.

“We would have been in business, but we would have been a mediocre company, a company struggling to make ends meet.”

Other important moments are still related to production. More precisely, the construction, throughout these years, of the two factories.

“Historically, I would start with the construction of the first factory, which I did from scratch. It was designed, thought by us. Then I think about the construction of the second factory. And the third and fourth follow. We have already bought the properties, and for one of them the project is already done. A European project is actually being submitted and we are waiting for the result.”

These new investments are designed for the relocation of the activity because the group is already operating at maximum capacity, there is no more room for any machinery. “Last year we just finished a 1.5-2 million euro project, a European project. Then we became the first factory in our field to be 100% energy independent.”

The money went both to the machines and to the photovoltaic park at the current factory. “For a year and a half I haven’t paid a leu on current. I made the decision for two reasons.”

On the one hand, using more technology in business has increased energy consumption. The installed power that the factory had was no longer enough and the contractor wanted to make up the difference with these photovoltaic panels.

“Now we give 20-30% more energy to the network than we take. And that covers our price difference.”

As far as production is concerned, the factories are working at maximum capacity, that’s why the businessman bought a 5,0000 m2 plot of land, and that’s only 500 meters from the current unit. “It’s a project I worked on for a year. We aim not only at a relocation, but also at a development in terms of volume and an increase in the product portfolio. In 3-5 years we want to remain with two factories, only bigger and newer.”

Each unit will have its own activity – one will be for signage and another for packaging.

Rodotex entered the packaging area in 2011. During the 2008-2009 crisis, around 85-90% of the turnover came from the advertising printing area. “Arunci dropped the domain and our turnover on advertising print decreased by 80%. We had to compensate from other divisions such as signage. Then, we developed our packaging area. We submitted a European project and we received three machines dedicated to packaging.”

Then, gradually, this division grew strongly, surpassing the area of ​​advertising printing.

Signaling is a distinct business, but it contributes about 30-35% at the group level. The rest is the packaging and advertising print area (analyzed together as a division).

“In the packaging area, our first customer was Fiterman Pharma, a company also from Iasi. Together, we developed new products. They have grown a lot. We also grew up next to them. It was and is a mutually beneficial partnership.”

When it comes to packaging, Rodotex focused its attention on companies in the area.

This is a business with a very small profit margin. Here, shipping represents a large share of the product cost. It’s a volume business.

“That’s why it’s good to focus on our region, I’m talking about up to 400 km around Iasi. We work with Antibiotice, with Ropharma, with DVR Pharm (separated from Dacia Plant, with an extraordinary expansion at the European level). We have just produced their stands for the fairs in Paris and Milan. There is still room for growth. Our division has no limit.”

This year, three or four drug or supplement factories will open in the Iaşi area alone, with which the entrepreneur has already held discussions to produce their packaging.

“We also work for Balkan Pharmaceuticals from Chisinau, which will open a new factory in Pašcani this year. It’s almost ready.”

Rodotex also produces for other industries, such as the food industry, but most of the business comes from pharma. The capacity of the factory is 1-1.5 million boxes of medicine per day. In the food industry, the orders are 100,000-200,000, so much smaller.

“As for the license to produce signage for Hilton, we have a license for 40 countries in Europe and the Middle East, that is, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar. In Europe we have permanent work. This year alone we have already done signage for five hotels. I had works in Vienna, Budapest, Debrecen, but also Cluj. We provide everything, from the design of signage to installation.”

Rodotex receives monthly everything that is developed under the Hilton brands and, starting from the specifications, it does the interior and exterior signage works. At first it was hard, but then it became a routine because there are some very strict rules. Including the signaling components for Hilton are imposed by the specifications – which manufacturer, which type of LED, which type of material.

“You don’t get to choose. For other companies we work for, we can do that. We did all the Mobexpert stores, but we also work for Altex, Kaufland, Amazon, Microsoft, Cognizant or the Iulius group.”

This year, the company finished work at the Iasi Airport.

“I designed, through an innovation of mine about 10 years ago, the signage. We also implemented it for the Iulius group, but Iasi Airport is the first airport with this technology. We saved the airport 520,000 euros only from electricity consumption during the warranty period. We are already in discussions with five other airports in Romania.”

The innovation is a light panel, one cm thick, with a double face and which consumes 5 watts per meter.

“It can be implemented in other companies as well, we have already implemented it in Palas Iasi, then in Palas Campus.”

In total, across all divisions, Rodotex has over 650 companies as customers, of which 90% are from Romania, and the rest from abroad.

“We have contact with almost everything that the big cities in Romania mean. I believe that Iasi has the biggest growth in the last 3-5 years. We were very far behind, but now, from an industrial point of view, we have reached Cluj and Timisoara. And our development capacity is much greater.”

For a more harmonious and rapid growth of the area, infrastructure is needed in the first place.

“We are not connected with other areas where other customers could come to us. For example, to Terapia, from Cluj, a company that is our client, a delivery by rail takes 10 hours. If we had a highway it would take half as long.”

Thus, the costs are also much higher. It is one thing for a TIR to go constantly at 90 km/h on the highway and another to go through the mountains, on serpentines. The consumption is double. The profit margin in the packaging business is very, very small, somewhere between 2 and 5%, explains Florin Dobrea.

“From our point of view, the highways are much more important than the airport, given the fact that our products are transported only by trucks, so only by road. Sure, business partners can come by air. This investment can attract many businesses to Iasi. But for our business, highways are much more important. I am confident that in the coming years we will be able to travel on the A7. I don’t know what to say about A8.”

When it comes to business, Florin Dobrea adds that the only things he wants are constancy and predictability.

“In 2024, I estimate that we will have a small increase, even if it is a very difficult year. Everyone says that there will be elections, that money will appear. I don’t see anything like that in our field. We are in a field that does not really depend on anything external. When a man is sick, he buys medicine, leaves food and buys medicine.”

It will be a tougher year than 2023. The only good thing that happened in 2023, he explains, was that raw material prices almost normalized. By comparison, during the pandemic they doubled.

“This year, the situation is stable. It’s just that out of our 650 customers, about 15% are finding it increasingly difficult. It’s about the manufacturers related to the construction industry. Real estate fell, and the businesses of producers of raw materials for construction also fell automatically. Also, the textile industry is going very hard. And we also feel that in the controls.”

At the end of 2024, for the entire group, he sees an increase of about 10%, up to 3-4 million euros. The number of employees remains constant at around 50.

“We have always tried to compensate through technology. For example, this year we put into operation the first machine for sorting medicine packages with artificial intelligence. It is a machine that does not exist in the Eastern European region. There are only a few companies in Europe that have it. We thus replaced the work of eight people. What ten used to do, now two do. We may see more such moves. Today we can make 1,000,000 boxes a day with only 8-10 people”, concludes the entrepreneur.