Miras – Expanding a Metal Trader’s Production Line
For the past 15 years Miras’ main business has been trading with metals. The company is one of the top 10 steel metallurgic products suppliers in Romania. Miras has the capacity to supply the most diverse range of steel products to the Romanian market.
In early 2008, Bridge Europe Consulting was contracted to assist Miras with its expansion plans. At the time, the market was still bullish, and the company had extremely good growth perspectives. The objective was the achievement of higher margins, by manufacturing some of the products themselves.
Bridge Europe Consulting helped the client MAP (Massive Action Plan) their growth. The focus was on setting up a manufacturing line. Miras was not using its warehouse facilities to maximum capacity, so it was an easy decision to put the manufacturing line in their existing location. We drafted the feasibility study and designed the funding structure. We helped the company attract all the necessary financing for this new investment, which consisted of grant and bank financing.
The financing structure was developed optimally, to maximise non-reimbursable grants and minimise the company’s own financial contribution to the project. New equipment and production machinery was to be bought to operate a complete technological line, creating new workplaces and contributing to the economic growth of the region by the implementation of new technologies in the production process, certification of ISO quality systems and staff training.
We submitted the grant application. The project was selected for funding, and the requested EU grant amounting to EUR 480,000 was approved. Miras received 99.60 points, and was ranked the fifth in a total of 38 approved projects (of 714 projects submitted during 2008 session). Unfortunately the evaluation process took more than a year, thus at the moment of approval the economy changed significantly. The investment no longer made sense for the company. With our tools, we helped them take the decision of cancelling the investment project.