At the beginning of the Logistics Panel held at CEDER 2023, moderator Daniel Cautis, Managing Partner of Dunwell Industrial Brokerage, shared his very optimistic view over the upcoming growth that the development of the Romanian highway infrastructure would determine. Data shows that the stock of warehouse square meters have doubled within the last 5 years, while the deliveries of highways increased by a fraction. What is exciting is that the next 3-4 years we’ll be having a huge increase of infrastructure developemnt, namely more than 600 Km will be delivered.
Șerban Juverdeanu, Head of Development at GlobalVision, said that having travelled a lot around the country, he could confirm that “now the […] physical progress of works, is really significant. I’m seeing it as I drove along it. It’s not just road infrastructure, but it’s also the railways. […] There are several nodes which are currently being completed. […] This infrastructure brings […] and will bring a lot of development.”
His fellow panelist, Ana Dumitrache, Managing Director of CTP Romania, took a more neutral stance. She admitted that the development in infrastructure was a good thing, but she was displeased with the pace of this development. She also mentioned having to use investor money for infrastructure works, something which she says would not happen in competitor countries like Poland: “CTP in Romania has spent roughly 5 million euros in building infrastructure. Yes, you have a nice access in Stefănești, you have a nice access in Popești, you have a superb bridge over the highway in Bolintin at the kilometre 23. It’s all built on our investors’ money.”
Gijs Klomp, Business Development Manager at WDP, confirmed that the infrastructure development helps unlock areas of Romania which used to be unattractive, although he, too, mentioned that it was all happening slowly: “If you see the northwest of Romania, you start to see that people are starting to look further away from the border following the upcoming highway. […] It’s never fast enough, but at least we start to see now quite an impressive pipeline.”
