STADA: Greenfield investment in the name of health

STADA is the only multinational company to have started a huge greenfield investment in the past thirty years. Its state-of-the-art factory is based in Turda, Cluj County, and it is worth over EUR 70 million. Mihai Fugarevici, the General Manager of Stada Romania, told Business Review the story behind this investment.

By Anda Sebesi

What is your leadership style and how does it support your company’s performance?

As a manager, I am both result-oriented and people-oriented. While I constantly focus on business development, objectives, and results I never forget to empower my team to responsibly take actions and decisions. We set business objectives, we agree upon the strategy to reach them, and I count on their agility to implement best practices to get expected results. I encourage them to collaborate as a team and help each other in the process. I encourage them to be better versions of themselves every day because I am a true believer in people’s growth when they strive for performance and self-development.

What were your main professional achievements in 2023?

2023 was a very intense year for all our business units—in terms of both commercial and technical operations. STADA is the only multinational company to have a huge greenfield investment in Romania in the past thirty years. Our most modern factory is based in Turda, Cluj County, and it’s a project worth more than EUR 70 million. The coordinates of the site are impressive: total area of 100,000 sqm, 30,000 sqm of built area, 12 state-of-the-art production lines, a full capacity of 160 million packshots per year, and a team of 400 professionals. We held the ground-breaking ceremony in November 2022, and we’ve now almost finished construction. We are in the fine-tuning phase and preparing for the GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) authorisation. Our objective is to begin operating our plant in October 2024. From the business sales and profits point of view, we had remarkable, above market overall results. All our business units—CHC (Consumer Healthcare), RX (Generic medicines and Biosimilars), and Specialty Healthcare (Parkinson disease solutions)—achieved and even exceeded their objectives. The IQVIA 2023 report released in March 2024 highlighted our Generics division as best in class with a growth of +82.4% vs 2022. I believe the figures speak for themselves. I am very proud of my entire team and confident for the future.

What were the biggest challenges your business sector faced last year and how did you navigate them?

The pharmaceutical market is one of the most dynamic and unpredictable markets, and at the same time it is very regulated from a legal perspective as it is so closely related to people’s health. If we’re taking into account the impact of the covid-19 pandemic, geopolitical tensions near our borders, and the global political tension caused by all the upcoming elections and ongoing ideological conflicts, we can talk about one of the most challenging years in the last decade. The rises in inflation, energy prices, and raw material prices had an immense impact on operational costs, the cost of goods, and the supply chain. Employees’ mindset is different now after the pandemic years, and one needs to find the best solutions to keep them happy, engaged, and satisfied. On top of all this, we are in the process of recruiting hundreds of employees for our Turda plant. In conclusion, the main challenges were related to consolidating our 3 business pillars—CHC, RX, Specialty healthcare—, making sharp decisions on our product portfolio, and getting the best people for our team.

“We’re looking forward to launching our state-of-the-art factory in Turda this year and taking further steps towards business growth on the Romanian market, aiming to be among the top 5 generics producers in Romania.”

Goals for 2024: