First farm tractor made in Romania after 10-year break unveiled in Bucharest. AgriMin Petre Daea: Tractors need to be produced in Romania

Manufacturer of farm and forestry machinery IRUM Reghin presented on Tuesday in Bucharest the first farm tractor manufactured in Romania after a 10-year break, on an investment of 4 million euro; the machine’s selling price starts at 34,500 euro. “The total investment in this project was over 4 million euro, and the project spanned about 5 years and incorporated the work of 50 engineers. As the main goal we sought to roll out a tractor with a competitive quality/price ratio, targeted at all farmers but especially at small and medium-sized ones. We put great emphasis on the visual identity and in this regard we invested heavily in design. And what’s most important: our goal was to create a tractor that can be exported worldwide and boldly represent the Romanian industry,” IRUM Reghin development director Andrei Oltean told a press conference on Tuesday. The Tagro tractor was developed at the Reghin-based Research and Development Center for Agricultural and Forestry Machinery – IFOR. This center is unique in Europe and was set up by the Maviprod group of companies in the precincts of the IRUM plant, on an investment of 2.65 million euro. The center employs about 50 Romanian engineers. The investment for bringing the Tagro project to life required another 4 million euro made available by IRUM shareholder, Maviprod group. The tractor’s serial production will start in April 2019 and the management of IRUM Reghin estimates that 200 machines will be produced and sold in the first year, that the number will go past 300 in 2020, and 500 Tagro tractors will follow in 2021. IRUM CEO Mihai Olteanu said that the new tractor “will be bound for foreign buyers, first of all for Hungary, where the company already has its own headquarters that will be expanded, but that “the Bulgarian and Ukrainian markets are particularly interesting and they will serve as connection bridges to Western Europe.” Tagro is intended primarily for small and medium-sized farms and will be sold both on the domestic and foreign markets, and has all the necessary features for a modern tractor, including radio control and air conditioning. Prior to the release, the tractor was tested in Romania and Italy, and by the end of this year the process of homologation with the Romanian Automotive Registry in Bucharest will be finalised. IRUM was founded in 1953 as a facility for the repair of farming and forestry machinery. In 1993, the Oltean family founded Maviprod group, which bought in 1996 the majority stake in IRUM Reghin. In 2007 IRUM Reghin entered a partnership with the Tractorul plant in Brasov, to produce together a Romanian farm tractor, but the bankruptcy of the Brasov-based plant cut the project short. Despite that, in 2010 IRUM Reghin started producing farm tractors in partnership with the Belarusian Factories. IRUM Reghin currently sells 500 tractors on the Romanian market, accounting for 20 percent of a market where 2,500 new tractors are sold annually. IRUM has almost 500 employees, and the 2017 turnover of Maviprod group – that also incorporates IRUM – is 40 million euro.   AgriMin Petre Daea: Tractors need to be produced in Romania   The Romanian farm tractor developed by IRUM Reghin attracted Minister of Agriculture Petre Daea like a magnet, his first stop of the traditional tour of the INDAGRA 2018 Fair being at the stand of the Romanian tractor manufacturer. “I intend to come to you as soon as possible, because it is worth discussing as carefully as possible, to see what we can do together and to draw a path of the Romanian tractors industry with the launch in Reghin, which is a great thing. I would spend until tomorrow morning next to this tractor, because it is worth the effort of these people, who have found the way to success when asked to analysed which way to turn. I am glad that it is nothing less than any other tractor on this exhibit platform. It is a moment of satisfaction for all Romanians. It was a desideratum of ours because it was a field in which we were competitive and where the foreign market was populated by Romanian tractors and aggregates,” Petre Daea said on Wednesday. Asked by a journalist if he will support a “Rabla” programme for tractors in view of the re-engineering of the Romanian agriculture, the minister has given assurances that together solutions can be found “so that we do what needs to be done for the Romanian industry.” Subsequently, Daea visited another stand of a tractor manufacturer, Titan Machinery, telling them they have competition on the market, all the while tasting honey and other products offered by the exhibitors. The Minister of Agriculture made a tour of the exhibition and, together with his Finnish counterpart, Jari Leppa, and Finland’s Ambassador to Romania, Paivi Pohjanheimo, again visited the stand of the Romanian tractor from Reghin and the stand of the Association of Sibiu Salami Producers. Unfortunately, the animals are completely missing from this year’s edition of the INDAGRA Fair due to the evolution of African swine fever on Romanian territory, which has closed all animal fairs.