There are no more factories left in Bucharest with at least 1,000 employees, according a ZF study based on the data of the Trade Registry regarding the largest 500 employers in Bucharest.
The city’s industry was broken by the privatization in the beginning of the 90s, the robbing and the real estate boom which made from the plots of the former industrial platforms some veritable “golden mines”.
From the East of the city, where tens of thousands of employees worked at Faur and Republica, to the West, on Dambovita bank, at Semănătoarea, and in South, on the IMGB platform, to Pipera industrial platform in Northern Bucharest, most of the factories were demolished, so the production units currently counting the largest number of employees are Romaero (921), Vulcan (832) and General Turbo (773).
Just a few of the factories which were demolished for new real estate projects were moved in the outskirts, one of the few exceptions being the Timpuri Noi factory, whose Bucharest’s plot was bought by the Sweden billionaire Ingvar Kamprad, the owner of IKEA. The shareholders of Timpuri Noi have relocated the factory in Jilava, but from 2,700 employees in the 90s, the engine factory reached 86 employees last year.
Republica and Rocar are bankrupt, Semănătoarea only has nine employees, the activity of Pumac is reduced down to zero employees and turnover and the land is put on sale for the development of an office project, considering that 700,000 of the 900,000 Bucharest employees are currently working in services – for banks, IT, but also hypermarkets, where the payment offered is close to the minimum wage. (source: zf.ro)
