Cristinel Dobrotă, Deputy General Manager – Business Development, Romcarbon: In business, drivers refer to Speed and Passion: the speed of making decisions, the speed of adaptation

The year 2024, so far, was not a good year for European industry, the crisis continue and the difficulties faced by the big Europeans economies had a serious impact in the smaller countries, like Romania. Romanian industry is connected to the big European economies, like Germany, and any difficulties there are transferred to us. In the past 5 years EU Commission produced several measures in line with the Green Deal commitment, unfortunately the EU authorities didn’t take into consideration the immediate impact to the European industry.

This year, The Diplomat-Bucharest shares with its valued partners and audience, a momentous milestone – the 20th anniversary on the business media segment in Romania.

So, we came a long, wonderful and also challenging way to this year, when we celebrate two decades of unwavering dedication to excellence in media and our relentless pursuit of delivering insightful, timely and impactful business news and events. To celebrate this milestone, THE DIPLOMAT-BUCHAREST connects with businesspeople and put into light their excellence and performances in a special event, THE DIPLOMAT-BUCHAREST AWARDS GALA. This year, the special Awarding Gala ceremony will take place on October 22, at JW MARRIOTT BUCHAREST GRAND HOTEL, Grand Ballroom.

To mark the occasion, we spoke with business leaders about their business sentiment, expectations and conclusions for the first half of this year. We recently talked to Cristinel Dobrotă, Deputy General Manager – Business Development, Romcarbonand here there are his opinions:

What we see today is the increase of import from outside EU for the products which does not observe same criteria like EU industry is obliged to follow. It is required immediate action to protect the European industry and to request following same rules for the commercial partners located outside EU, when it comes to sustainability and eco design. We are expecting a slight recovery in the second half of the year counting on the calming down of the turbulence in the energy system of Romania which have created additional problems in the local industry, knowing that for the industry, energy is an import cost element.     

What matters most for a leader in 2024

For a leader, what matter the most, especially in 2024, is unity, we can see this at the small scale, in any company no matter how small or big it is, and at the large scale in big communities, like countries or EU. The message to our team it is “We must always be a TEAM”

In my opinion, in the past 4 years when we have faced the most challenging period after the second world war, very serious medical crisis, the war in Europe with the bad consequences we all feel  and the challenges of Green Deal commitment. Taking these into consideration, we can say the fundamental of leadership is adaptability and innovation, maybe more than ever.  We are acting in this directions and trying to catch the speed of the changes.

Competition is the key to performance

When it comes to people, competition is the key to performance as well and I have the feeling the authorities forgot this when it was designed and adopted the labor legislation in Romania and I strongly believe this is not in the benefit of people, in the long term. In our company we do the required changes whenever is necessary to do but we do face the same difficulties like any other company in Romania when it comes to man power, like shortage and low qualification. In the past years we see more and more discussions about education efficiency but less actions, I know is a sensitive topic but is a reality we need to point and unveil.   

As Red flags I would point out the man power efficiency and energy efficiency, where we working to improve. As an opportunity, I would mention about eco-design where we are developing a strategy and the new products we have in plan to launch.

Drivers for business growth

The strongest potential in our company is plastic recycling and, as result of this, sustainable products. Romcarbon is a packaging manufacturer and plastic waste recycler, we produce plastic packaging for more than 60 years and 12 years ago we started recycling the waste of plastic packaging. In line with EU commitment, all packaging must be recyclable and to have a certain recycling content, this is a challenge for European industry and we believe we are one step ahead in this ambitious commitment. Eco-design is going to be a priority and a compulsory direction in the packaging industry, the sooner the better.   

In business, drivers refer also to Speed and Passion, by speed I mean: the speed of making decisions, the speed of anticipating the market tendency and next move, the speed of adaptation. We are living in a very dynamic period of the recent history full of challenges and changes, our reactions need to be fast, in fact  our life is “faster” these days. Passion is a key of evolving, 24 years ago I met an amazing man and fantastic business man, Mr. Clement Hung, which was the founder of Green Group and the saver of Romcarbon, which often said “By working with passion you are durable”, exactly his words. He was coming from a country where the market economy was very performant and people very efficient, that is why the impact of his words was very high. Indeed, by working with passion is durable, for both the human and business, in such a case the speed is no longer perceived as stressful.

In the industry, AI it doesn’t means ChatGPT or faking the videos. Artificial Intelligence is used in the technology manufacturing for years and is developed year by year, all the machinery use today AI, in a way or other, more or less developed. When it comes to technology, I cannot say is emerging something lately, is a constant process started years ago and continuous developed. When it comes to humans, it is different story, indeed we can see changes lately but the real contribution is still abstract. Artificial Intelligence must help humans to be more efficient, must help to increase the security of humans, AI need to have healthy contribution to National Economy. I know, Artificial Intelligence is the main topic of discussion today and is regarded as Panacea but is not healthy for our Economy to ignore the Industry or Agriculture sectors, for instance, counting on AI to come and compensate. Artificial Intelligence should help these sectors to grow and become more efficient. Regarding measuring the impact of artificial intelligence in the business, what we have to measure, in my opinion, is the humans efficiency, a good humans efficiency it means a healthy AI contribution.