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 COMPANY PROFILE |
PRIVATE ROSE DISTILLERY ‘Rozabul’ LTD
NATURAL AROMATIC PRODUCTS
COMPOSITION, FLAVOURS,
FRAGRANCES AND COSMETICS.
4000 Plovdiv, 14 "Tsar Ivan Aleksander" Str.
Tel.: ( + 359 32 ) 222 243, 267 564
Fax.: ( + 359 32 ) 222 116
"Rozabul " Ltd. – Plovdiv is a newly established company, which has undertaken the task of restoring and setting on its feet the rose – manufacturing branch in Bulgaria, a branch proved its vitality. The company incorporates the efforts and the capital of sole – traders and businessmen without any state participation.
The preparatory, planning work, projecting and the construction of the rose distillery is accomplished in the course of a year ( from July 1993 to May 1994 ).
The good production and finance results made for our company to enjoy a good reputation of one of the leading producers of attar of roses and other essential oils and made it a preferable and stable partner to the above mentioned clients from abroad.
As a consequence of the production and commercial results we worked out and accepted a program for a further enlargement of the company’s activity in several directions, as follows:
To direct our efforts and finances fir the restoration of the existing but desolated gardens of rose, lavender and peppermint plantations.
To set aside enough funds for the establishment of new plantations of:
1.- rose gardens – 1500 – 1800 dk.
2.- lavender plantations – 2000 – 2500 dk.
The company established stable production communications and appeared to be the principal customer of rose and lavender blossom from the villages:
 ROSE GARDENS |
Otetz Paisievo – 650 dk.
Pesnopoi – 250 dk.
Ivan Vazovo – 250 dk.
Sarnedor – 200 dk.
the town of Streltcha – 180 dk.
village of Rozovetz – 120 dk.
 LAVENDER PLANTATIONS |
village of Dragomir – 2000 dk.
village of Elshitza – 1200 dk.
village of Bata – 300 dk.
village Smiletz – 350 dk.
village of Sredno Gradishte – 1200 dk.
Companies – buyers of our products are:
IF-USA, with a head office in Holland, which buys about 400-500 kg. Of Bulgarian attar of roses.
BIOLAN PERFUMERY, Lambry, France buys from "Rozabul" annually about 200 kg.
BEL FLAVOURS AND FRAGRANCES, Miltitz, Germany also buys attar roses from our company.
| Rozabul |
The good finance results of our activity make it possible that the company works only with its own circulating capital and is not indebted to other companies or banks.
The company is looking forward to perspective business contacts and enlarging of our activity by including another, similar to out production ( the manufacturing of final products and articles of the perfumery and cosmetics industry ), and also the processing of by-products of rose and lavender blossom for the purpose of preserving the environment.
Our company produces only natural and ecologically pure products.
We are in position and could kindly offer you additional information of all concerning the activity of the company.
Top of page
| STRATEGY |
Interview with Todor K. Petrov
President of Rozabul:
Q: Could you give to our readers a brief historical background of your company as well as your own personal professional experience?
A: I tried to show you the leaflet that we have published. This is a small anotation. The company was established in 1994. We first built this distilling factory for the production of rose and lavender oil with capacity firstly 60 cubic meters. Rose oil has been produced after a traditional Bulgarian technology and it is a traditional product for Bulgaria dating long ago – 400 years. But unfortunately things are not developing well for the past 40 years. The climate has changed, some years ago the harvest started being gathered on the 24-th of May and it starts on April. And this has leaded us to the decision to expand the factory in order to enlarge its power. In 1996-1997 the capacity was increased by 50%. Our distilling vessels now have the capacity of 90 cubic tones. We have to transport the product for example from Stranja to Kazanlack and it takes 100 kilometers. There has been deficiency and great demand lately, so we are facing big competition. In addition to all these problems, the market conditions have changed. The demand is not that high any more because there has been an increase in the demand of
"rose-concret"; this product has nothing in common technologically with the rose oil production. The difference is that the rose oil is a water extract from the blossom of the roses while the "concret" is the full solution of all the substances that are ingredients of the oil its self. In this connection in order to maintain our independence we maid a rose garden which spreads over 700 decrees. This year was the first harvest to be collected – around 50-60 tones.
Q: What were the financial results from last year?
A: I think that our company is not a big one but rather small compare to other companies. What we are proud of is that we self financing. I should say that it is almost impossible in Bulgaria to receive a credit no matter what you own in terms of factories or building. We built this factory with money from another company of ours. So in fact we made an internal loan within our company. We are paying back this credit now. The other company is dealing with petrol. | The turnover is about 1 million $ because we have not sold all our products. We have invested 1million dollars as well. We have bought some harvest machines. We have used a credit from a French bank because our main partner is a French firm. The biggest buyer of Bulgarian rose oil is the American company IFF. It is very hard to gain direct contacts. So we would like to have ones.
Q: What are your efforts in creating such direct contacts with American companies?
A: Our contacts are mainly personal – people who live in the USA, people in high position, including a CIA officer. Of course, we are not using him for intelligence but for creating commercial contacts. The specific things for Bulgaria is that we started in one type of market conditions and now the conditions are completely different.
Q: If the market conditions were that hard, why did you decide to create this company in 1994?
A: This is a life-motive of Mr.Skakaletchkov. The same question has been asked by a German company Harman and Reinman. He also asked who made the marketing assessment. We asked a German company to do such for us for 50 000 DEM and may be this company would have advised us not to make this investment. So let me tell you our understanding: history and time proved that we were right but no one would have advised us to invest if we have asked. So we board a plane, we fly high in the sky and we do not have any parachutes but we jump because we do not have other choice in Bulgaria. If we survive – that’s O.K., if not that means that even god does not want us. That’s how our company was created. We are alive, we have survived, we are expanding, so we must have intuition. We are producing
40% of the Bulgarian rose oil.
Q: But if you produce 40%, that is not equivalent to 1 million $? What I mean is the comparison of the amount with the price.
A: Probably you have wrong information for the price. 4500 $ for a kilo of rose oil is probably an old price. There is not such a price at the moment in Bulgaria.
Q: We were just told that 1 tone is been exported every year.
A: One tone makes the Bulgarian and Turkish export yearly.
Q: If you are producing 40% of the Bulgarian rose oil, are you exporting them your self or are you using a distribution company?
A: We export them our self, we don’t have an intermediary.
Q: What are your main comparative advantages compare to you main competitors?
A: High quality, interesting prices and loyalty in terms of trade.
Q: How do you see the future of this sector?
A: There has been a draft law about the rose oil production which is very out-dated today because it’s no use to have a separate law for such a small sector. This law will set out a minimum buy-out prices of the roses and rose oil. The authors of this draft law ask me who is going to buy this rose oil and this is not a serious work for me. I think that we need a grain law because the grain feeds the country but not a rose oil law. Even if there is no rose oil production in Bulgaria people would not suffer, may be the business and the economy would but not the people. We made our own future. The Institute of Roses in Kazanlack is the scientific body which creates the genetic source. We just brought some lavender seeds from there. Such seeds are being produced also in other small villages throughout Bulgaria – Vesselinovo, Strelcha. We have the desire to set up 2000 decrees of lavender, 1000 decrees of sclarea. What we do we pay in advance to these producing places so they want to work with us. We want to set up 1500 decrees of rose plants.
Q: You were just mentioning that the demand for rose oil is decreasing while the demand for rose concret is increasing. Do you have the right technology to produce rose concret to be competitive?
A: Yes, we have it. It is a traditional technology and welknown as well. We have the right specialists and recipes. I will tell you why the demand is greater by the specialists. They extract "rose absolute", a kind of rose oil, also special waxes and other substances which are used in the cosmetics and perfumery while the rose oil is only for the perfumery. So this is the so called "three stage" technology and it is much cheaper to buy rose concret. But it is a good trade product for us as well. By the way the French company that we are working with – " Biolant Rose", has managed to get to the second stage of the production of rose concret while Reynolds, the American firm, has got to the third stage. The technology could be used for producing some herbs as well. Bulgaria is the country with the biggest export of herbs in the World. This is a challenge for us to use this installation and another one based on alcoholic extract through the use of methyl and ethyl alcohol. We have set up special systems so we can broaden the range of the products we are producing. If you come here to buy rose water as the Japanese did, and we offer you herbal extracts which have medical use as cures, you would buy them as well. We have the herbs and the recipes to make wondrous medicines which are plain but very effective. I will share an opinion which may be true but we don’t like it very much. It is like a lesson to us. The managing director of Harman and Reinman said that we should focus on the production of natural products; leave the high chemical industry to us, unfortunately you are not good at it any way. But we are following his first advise to produce Bulgarian natural traditional products.
The Institute of Roses has the technology of the production of herbal seeds that could develop into something else. And many of these plants are already cultivated into separate sorts of plants. So this is the future development of our company from now own. We are still going to produce the rose oil, the lavender oil as well, Salvia Sclarea oil and rose concret. And may be herbal extracts from next year. We could even make tomato paste. We have the best tomatoes in the world. Bulgaria was known to be the vegetable garden of Europe. But now the conditions are very bad in the country, especially in the villages. When we created this rose garden we use some unique technologies. It is a peak hour for our sector. And no ministry could help us. For example if the Ministry of Agriculture supports us the Ministry of Finance doesn’t.
Q: Our readers are always interested in new business opportunities. We would like to know in which area of your company and business would you attract investments?
A: Our company is not a shareholder organization but Ltd. So if we can offer the possibility of investments we have to change the structure of our company.
I would like to tell you several things that no body could tell us what to do in terms of rose oil production. We can give advises. As far the Sclarea concret is concerned, the Reinold Tobbacco is the greatest producer of it. Their specialists were here. We have contacts and contracts with them. There are some differences in terms of technologies and they are well known. They produce the same product but with different technology. They told us that just the fence around the factory would be 1 million $. We had some exchange of experts. We have sat up this joint venture with Reinolds Tobbacco. May be it will not deal with the latest technologies but any way the contact is there. As far as the rose concret is concerned the French company Rose Biolante is producing such in Morroco. 40% of it is wined by Channel. We are making the same procedure of contacts with them. And the hit are the natural products, the herbal extracts. In this area we are willing to accept any kind of help.
Q: As a final issue, what would be you final message to our 2.5 million readers?
A: We would try to reach you readers with our products, with our real cosmos of scents and may be, if the future let us, with health as well so we can help the people.
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© World INvestment NEws, 1998.
This is the electronic edition of the special country report on Bulgaria
published in FORBES Magazine's
November 30th issue.
Developed by AgenciaE.Tv
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BULGARIA, 
