ATHENS: Italian food group Barilla is producing pasta destined for Asian markets – which account for more than 3 billion consumers – at its Greek facilities, following the completion of investments by Barilla Hellas in 2013-15 in a factory in Thiva, central Greece, and a mill at Volos on the east coast, worth 5 million euros.
Barilla Hellas currently exports to more than 40 countries in Western and Eastern Europe, North America and Australia, while it serves as the Italian group’s administrative center for its Eastern Europe operations.
Barilla has invested 70 million euros in Greece in the past 25 years and absorbs 75,000 tons of Greek wheat a year. According to its financial results for 2015, turnover rose to 72.9 million euros, while earnings before taxes came to 4.4 million euros. Turnover in the Eastern European countries that are under Barilla Hellas’s administrative control, moreover, came to 128 million euros in 2015.
“Barilla Hellas has further established itself as an important production hub in Eastern Europe and for the group as a whole in 2015,” Barilla Hellas CEO George Spiliopoulos said. “We managed to ensure that products destined for large markets in Asia will be produced in Thiva.”
The Thiva plant has produced over 88,000 tons of export-destined products in the last five years. The 1.23-million-euro investment at Volos, meanwhile, has boosted its capacity by 33 percent.
