Upetrom 1 Mai Ploiesti, a company specialising in supplyingequipment and services for the petroleum and gas industry,controlled by Constanta-based businesman Gabriel Comanescu, willlet around a quarter of its employees go by the end of this yearamid a drastic reduction in orders. The company will therefore makearound 600 of its current 2,200 employees redundant.
"We have tried to keep from resorting to redundancies, and sent800 people home on technical unemployment, paying them 85% of theirsalary in the last five months. But orders have yet to see arebound, which forces us to lay off around 600 employees of ourcurrent 2,200," explained Radu Petrescu, communication managerwithin the Upetrom group.
The Upetrom representative says at least on the domestic marketthe company has seen a major decline in orders. "Orders on thedomestic market tended to account for around 30% of our business.However, since the beginning of the year, they have been down 85%,whilst orders from abroad fell by 20%. Nothing is budging and Idon't think there will be a recovery on short term. Theredundancies plan has already been discussed and approved by thetrade unions," added the Upetrom representative. However, this doesnot rule out the possibility for Upetrom 1 Mai Ploiesti hiringagain when the economy rebounds.
The company posted an 87.2 million-euro turnover last year,according to data from the Ministry of Finance, with the Upetromrepresentative specifying the turnover will be down in 2009.Several companies specialising in the supply of equipment andservices to the petroleum and gas industry announced they have beenaffected by a steep decline in orders, especially those originatingfrom large Romanian petroleum companies, such as Petrom andRompetrol. In turn, petroleum and gas companies were affected bythe reduction in the price of the oil barrel in the context of thecrisis, which has led to investment budgets being cut, and to areduction in orders to equipment producers.
