Well-known Moldovan ice cream brand Sandriliona has taken the lead in the Iraqi market with more than 50 million consumers, said Frank Arif, the owner of the Moldovan ice cream factory Sandriliona located in Ialoveni town near Chisinau.
On Monday evening, the businessman was a guest of the Chisinau Economic Press Club, where he said that in Iraq, ice cream manufacturer Sandriliona, as a Moldovan investor, has opened its own factory.
“Now the factory is successfully implementing the second stage official Chisinau development to bring the equipment to its design capacity of producing 200 tons of ice cream per day,” the businessman said.
According to him, opening his own production in Iraq was a natural decision.
“Our partner in this business, a banker by profession, owned an ice cream factory. He offered to buy it out, which we did, modernizing the factory to the level of a leading enterprise in Iraq, whose products are in high demand among the population of the country,” Frank Arif said, adding that it was the only one of his businesses, which from the first day went well and started bringing good income.
The owner of several businesses in Moldova says that the production of ice cream in Iraq under the Moldovan brand Sandriliona is quite profitable, since in that country the air temperature remains above 30 degrees centigrade for 8 months of the year, and 80% of the population is under 30 years old.
“We planned to complete the first phase at the factory in Iraq in two years, but we managed to reach the planned production volumes after two months, and now we are working on the implementation of the second phase, planning to complete it in March 2024, when the factory will be producing 200 tons of ice cream per day,” he said.
Frank Arif is satisfied with the way his Moldovan investment works in Iraq, where the factory employs 400 people, of whom 90% are young girls and women. According to him, only very recently many of them had to work very hard on low-paid jobs, and now they manage the production processes, making ice cream under the Moldovan brand of Sandriliona.
Speaking about other foreign markets where Moldovan ice cream is supplied to, Frank Arif named countries in Africa and Asia, in particular, Senegal, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Saudi Arabia, and EU countries – Germany, Romania, as well as Serbia.
Due to rising prices for delivering Moldovan ice cream to Africa, when one container costs 20 thousand euros, which takes 60% of the cost of production, the businessman decided to open ice cream production on the African continent.
Businessman Frank Arif’s philosophy is that even the cheapest ice cream should be of high quality because it is mainly enjoyed by children and people with low incomes.
“A rich person, if he doesn’t like ice-cream, can easily manage without it, but children and people with low incomes cannot,” he believes.
INFOTAG’s dossier: The Sandriliona factory exports more than 60% of its products, and sells approximately 40% on the domestic market, where sales are growing steadily. Sandriliona accounts for more than 50% of the Moldovan ice cream market.