The FINANCIAL — In his interview with The FINANCIAL former General Director of Rompetrol Georgia wishes good luck and success in his challenge to new General Director of the company and says that Georgia will always be his second home. Voicu reviews his past activities in the company and speaks about future plans.
“First of all I’d like to thank you for the welcome collaboration we shared with your newspaper. The various dialogues we have shared have been very interesting. I think it has been quite a successful period for us, we had a clear mission for the local market and we managed to reach our objectives.
We have been present on the market for a while. We started in the spring of 2006 and slowly learned the local game. When I came here in spring 2008 we had the clear objective to conquer our retail market share and I think we really did a great job in our operations.
Q. What do you consider the most attractive thing in Georgia as a country?
A. Regardless of the business sphere I would say that it is easy for me to feel at home here due to several reasons. First of all both, my country and Georgia, have Orthodox Christianity as a religion, and there are other similarities too. We both have nice coastlines along the black sea, we are practically on opposite sides of it, in fact it is possible to see the sun rise from the sea in Constance and watch the sun set in to the sea in Batumi. And from a political viewpoint both countries have been under communist regimes. Now we are in the process of properly setting up a democratic environment. Some geographic landscapes are also similar, so all in all it was easy for me to feel at home in Georgia.
Q. Why are you leaving Rompetrol, is it due to a personal reason?
A. Rompetrol has new shareholders and they have their own strategy and their own approach which is very normal and somehow more or less I feel I have finished my mission here.
In the past 18 months I took care of the development of the company which at times was quite intensive, and we can now say that we are at the successful end of one stage and are opening the door to a new one so the new management will have a bit of different mission in comparison with mine. They will have to try to optimize the actual infrastructure and benefit from all the good things built in the meantime. So I would say it was more or less a logical time to hand over operations.
Q. What about Georgia, how will you remember this country?
A. First of all I would not like to speak about Georgia in the past tense. I prefer to keep referring to it in the present tense, and I think that a good aspect to mention about Georgia is the quality of the people. The people here are very warm and very welcoming, we appreciate and relate this hospitable nature to Romania, where I come from, but I have to admit that I think the people here are the more welcoming and warm than any other country that I have visited. Anytime you have the chance to interact with them is quite a pleasure. So this country will be like a second home for me for the foreseeable future and that is why I would prefer to speak about Georgia in the present tense.
Q. You had to manage the company during the August 2008 events when the Government restricted its control on oil reserves. Was it a big challenge for you?
A. Every challenge is transformed into an opportunity if you are taking proper care of it, so for us, obviously despite the negative impacts on the social environment and on the people who had to suffer a lot, this was a good opportunity to prove our commitment in investing in the development of Georgia.
I remember that specific period very well because I was here during those hot days in Georgia . It was a good chance for us to prove our potential. I remember that, except an import coming from the East, we were the one and only company who managed to run imports during the month of August 2008 and I think this was a clear sign that we like the market and believe in the business here. This somehow later on proved to have been a good decision.
Q. You had to work during quite a tense economic and political period here in Georgia, were there any serious obstacles that you faced at the company?
A. As I mentioned before, I think that every problem can be transformed into an opportunity. I am quite sincere about this, as we have managed till now to continuously develop the business and its operations. So in these past 18 months I cannot mention any time when we experienced a drop in our operations.
I would not say we had any economic or political issues to handle in a negative manner. We started from a lower position as we were not present in retail and maybe this was giving us some energy to jump very high and very fast, so I would say that Industry in general suffered during this crisis but as we are not yet at our maximal maturity level it was easy to somehow survive the situation and manage to position our company and our operations in the right point. So all in all we benefited from some of the good moments on the market and we tried to see an opportunity in every move that we did.
Q. What did you plan to do and yet in the end could not manage during your years working at Rompetrol Georgia?
A. Obviously there are still a lot of things to be done, I am a developer by nature so I believe that this company can still be boosted in some aspects but there are certain issues that I could have solved by now, however there is nothing specific that I was meant to do but didn’t. There still are issues to be solved in the company in order to develop it, but all in all it has been quite a successful period and the results have been outstanding for the local market and the Rompetrol Group.
Q. If you had the choice, which country would you choose to do business in and why?
A. This is a question to answer objectively, but I have spent quite an intense year and a half here so it’s hard for me to make comparisons with other environments as I have been extremely focused on my job here. I can only speak about Georgia from this perspective, which is , a great place to do quality business.
In our industry competition is quite strong and only by competition you get a good environment to develop, so I think with the other players in the industry we are challenging each other and this can only end with the benefit of the consumer. I guess it’s not just in our industry that Georgia is considered a good environment to build a business, generally, especially due to the deregulations, and well defined tax environment makes it hard to compare with other countries. Nevertheless Georgia has a good environment to do business in.
Q. How do you see Rompetrol Georgia’s development over the next few years?
A. This I think could be better answered by the new management but according to my discussions with them as I understand in the short term they intend to slow down the development a bit and focus more on business optimization, trying to get the best out of the actual infrastructure and the actual framework which is already in place.
In the medium term, I would say there is a need to continue development because competition is strong and they will not hold their horses, so there is still a lot to do, but I guess that the new management, after a short period of assessing the actual situation, will probably decide to move forward.
Q. Are you content with the job you have done in Georgia?
A. It’s usually not that simple to evaluate yourself but on the other hand you have to evaluate yourself, because only by your own judgment can you properly advance. I think we did a great job here. I think that now it is easy to forget what we did and from where we have started.
I would point out two issues, I was not alone here, I like to believe I have built a great team of Georgian colleagues and more or less it is their merit also, because definitely I could not have done it without them and maybe they could not have done it without me, this is to be evaluated later, but we built a great team of young and dynamic people here, because what we did in such a short time could only be done by the energy coming from young people and today the average age in the headquarters is somewhere around 27 years. This fact, I think says a lot about the environment that has been built.
I can say that only with this type of team could we have implemented what we did, as in other conditions my presence here would have been less beneficial. I tried to keep the company fresh and on their toes pretty often, especially in the early months, till we found the right structure and the right colleagues to really allow all of us to work in the same direction. I think the level of delegation and empowerment was very high and still is, so I could easily be missing from office for several weeks and yet business would run perfectly under the management of my colleagues. I think this was one of the key elements – good communication with the local team.
Q. Can you name the thing that most obstructed you in doing your job during your time working in Georgia?
A. It would be very difficult to name one thing in particular but I think the easiest answer would be something coming from our operations which would be a logistic aspect. As we developed the business so fast and took it to such a high level, in the end we encountered some logistic problems which created some bottlenecks.
As you know we have been transporting via sea vessel from Constance to Batumi and this, in a month of high sales, proved to be a problem, because it is hard to find a vessel that is quickly available, Besides you need the boat terminals to be available to load or unload your vessels. So from our internal operations I would say we had some bottlenecks on the logistic side but nevertheless we had the right percent in the right place and I think we managed things pretty well.
Q. Where do you plan to continue your job, have you already decided where your next place of work will be?
A. For the following month I will assist my colleague in handing over properly the company and in the meantime I will asses my opportunities to see what is best for me at this stage, so for the moment I do not have anything well defined on the table and I will have to orient myself at a later stage. It’s hard to say for sure whether I will stay in the same sphere, we have this “nice” crisis around, this crisis that we are not feeling in Rompetrol Georgia is most probably still being felt in most business environments and in the human capital environment, so I will see. I am open to all kind of challenges so a lot of surprises may appear.
Q. Where did your family live during your Georgia mission? Tell us about your family members.
A. The moment I received my assignment to come here we became almost fully Georgian. My wife and I have been Georgian residents obviously for more than a year, she has been living with me here in Georgia and we have a simple apartment in central Tbilisi. We have a daughter who is now more than 2 years old. She is here with us in Tbilisi and has grown up here.
When she first came here she could not walk or speak, then she learned to speak and walk in Georgia and right now we are expecting our second child. My wife is in the 5th month of pregnancy so by the end of March we will, God willing, have our second child who will be more Georgian than we are today.
Q. Are you acquainted with Alexander Albin, the new Director of Rompetrol Georgia? If so, please describe him.
A. Yes I know him well, he is coming from our industry, he has good experience in this sector. He is quite familiar with the Rompetrol environment as he has spent several years in our headquarters in Bucharest. He is very nice person and is from Kazakstan. He is obviously a Russian speaker. All in all I think he is a good person and has some sound capabilities to perhaps do here a better job than I did until now.
Q. What will be your suggestion for the next Director of Rompetrol Georgia? What are the things that a new director should know?
A. This is easy to answer as in every business and every industry the key to success in whatever he will do is the right and proper understanding of the market. The deeper he goes in getting knowledge about the local market, the better and easier it will be for him. So this is the basic to start from.
To know the market means to know your competitors, to know your customers, to know their habits, to know your business trends, your business problems and the faster he gets to know the local market the easier it will be for him to better manage Rompetrol Georgia.
Q. Will you visit Georgia again? When?
A. First of all I don’t actually leave Georgia for the next 2-3 months. My life is here still so from the moment I return to Romania it will take us some weeks to proper determine a formal environment and plan for the future. Nevertheless when we leave Georgia then most probably we will visit here once or twice a year, because this has become our second home. We have a lot of friends, Georgian friends and it would be a pity to lose all the human relations we built here, and so certainly if we can then we will definitely return.
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