Polish Business Survey
Glaxo opens new facility
At the end of last week pharmaceutical concern Glaxo Wellcome opened a new production facility on the land of the former Polfa Poznań factory.
Modernisation and preparation for production cost the company around USD62m. Glaxo will be moving production of 45 new products to Poznań from the factory it closed in Świecie.
Next January Glaxo Wellcome hopes to buy most of the shares in Polfa Poznań which are owned by employees. Glaxo already has 96.4 percent of the company, 2.73 percent is still owned by the state which does not want to give up its stake.
Investor for street spy
Korkonet. pl believes that it will soon have an investor. The company provides on-line monitoring of Polish streets, fifty of which will be watching
Warsaw residents by the end of the year. The company believes that it will shortly have a major export market. Marcin Frackiewicz, creator of the street spy thinks that around PLN500,000 is needed for investment. Functions of this service include monitoring parking spaces, residential areas and control systems for companies and other organisations.
Sanitec opens new factory
At a cost of over PLN20m Sanitec will open a bath and shower factory in the Lodz special economic zone. This will be the fifth factory of the Finnish group in this country which was invested almost PLN250m since 1993.
The new facility will occupy a 4.4 hectare site in Ozorków. Sanitec has agreed to place at least EUR4m here which in fact will not even cover 80 percent of the cost of the factory. It will consist of two separate production facitilities and employ fifty people. Sanitec may even close its plant at Mińsk Mazowiecki and switch that production to Ozorków according to an anonymous source.
Krzysztof Biskupski of Sanitec considers that his company has a forty percent share of the domestic sanitary ceramics market producing more than 2 m pieces annually, some of which are exported. In the shower and bath sector it has a lower share of the market. Its main competitors are Cersanit from Krasnystaw near Zamość and the Italian Rocca who has a factory in the Gliwice section of the Katowice specail economic zone.
The domestic market consumes around 4m sanitary ceramic tiles per year, some five percent of which is imported, mainly from Italy and Germany.
Excise hits vodka drinkers
Since extra excise duty was added to vodka on 1 September, the sales of the Polmos group has fallen by some thirty to forty percent. Other smaller companies are reporting sales down by half. In the first eight months of the year sales were already down compared to last year, from 54.8m litres to 51m litres.
Drops in sales are blamed exclusively on the raise in duties by industry bosses. Józef Kapela, MD of Polmos Bielsko Bialy suggested that this represents a very large net loss for the treasury.
The fact that September s raise in duty effected less those companies with a strong brand on the market suggests that the worst losers will be the small producers.
The effect that these raises may have on the privatisation plans for the sector remain to be seen. Many analysts consider that investors have alreadyincluded these sales drops in their calculations. For example Iwona Jaworksa of Unicom Bols Group said that this would not cause her company to have a rethink. She believes that September s figures are just a short term phenomenum which will soon return to normal.
Ports to show profit
In the first seven months of this year the amount of cargo loaded in all Polish ports other than Szczecin-Swinoujscie fell slightly due to a drop in coal and steel which makes up the lion s share of bulk transport. The three largest ports, Szczecin, Gdansk and Gdynia, believe that they will show a joint profit of over PLN20m this year.
Treasury against port investments
Ports see their future in providing services for specialised transports. Many investors also see the possibilities offered by such markets although the owner of the ports, i.e. the treasury, is not so far sighted.
Transports are changing, especially witnessed by the drop in coal and steel and rise in small cargo and containers.
Krzysztof Gromadowski of the Port of Gdynia observes that it is essential for the ports to specialise in different types of transport and that is why Gdynia is investing PLN60m in infrastructure. Gdynia is placing a lot of hope in the transport of fertilisers, gas and cereals. Work on two new terminals is proceeding ahead: the USD75m Rudoportu and USD200m container depot. There are also plans for a goods and logistics terminal. Outside investors include Huta Katowice as well as the German Oiltanking who wants to spend up to DEM200m on an unloading facility but is being blocked at government level by lobbying from Polish fuels producers.