November 2008

Ambassador Robin Barnett met with key Prahova officials and visited RATP, Unilever and Halewood. Below is his account of the visit:

'This was my first visit to Ploieşti. The agenda included a visit to Petrom’s Petrobrazi refinery. Petrom’s Director of Refining is British and rightly proud of the progress being made. The big challenge there was the appalling environmental legacy left behind by decades of Communism. It was remarkable to see how much has already been done to clean this up. I had a short tour around the site and saw this for myself.  The before and after pictures were remarkable.  Petrom is working hard as well to ensure that its fuels will soon meet the very latest environmental standards. That will benefit us all.

My next call was on Unilever. There I discussed why Unilever see Romania as not only a good place to manufacture detergents and food products but also as a springboard for their operation in the region as a whole. Unilever is also active in putting something back into the community through corporate social responsibility projects.

My visit also included discussions with the local authorities where I sought to establish the opportunities for the British companies in the region as well as areas for potential official level collaboration. I was impressed by the vision of the local public transport authority as they try to tackle the growing congestion problem.

And finally I paid a visit to the Halewood winery in Ploieşti. This is a really great example of British and Romanian collaboration, producing top quality wine for both the domestic and the international market. When I visited the bottling plant, they were bottling Romanian Pinot Noir for Sainsbury’s. So those back in the Uk can test out the quality for themselves.'

Flickr: View photos from this and other regional visits