Alin Ioanes, Rombat: “This 1% turnover tax is a significant obstacle for us. We are fighting to remain relevant in this industry”

“Competitiveness remains a difficult problem to solve in the automotive industry. In addition to the competitiveness coming from the Far East, we also face the challenge of staying competitive at group level and remaining relevant from the perspective of group-level investments.

We are losing competitiveness factors; ultimately, there are not many differentiating elements. We are talking about the workforce, energy, taxation. From my perspective, from our perspective, it is extremely important that any impact on the workforce area is correlated with productivity, because otherwise it will be very difficult to transfer that cost in any direction,” stated Alin Ioanes, CEO of Rombat, during the Automotive Forum 2025 organized by Automotive Today and The Diplomat-Bucharest.

Key statements:

• As a company, we are looking toward Industry 4.0 and implementing various systems that help us become more efficient and more cost-effective in many ways.

• We are one of the major energy consumers. Therefore, any saving, any investment—including in photovoltaics—brings us added value. And here we see that even across Europe we face quite high prices. We are investing in equipment with lower consumption and higher efficiency. We remain in a space where these investments need support, and they are not at all easy to sustain given the current volatile economic environment.

• This 1% turnover tax is a significant obstacle for us, and I don’t think it was well received from the start. For us, it is a continuous fight to remain relevant in this industry.

• We are also looking closely at research and development, and here there may be a topic worth discussing—whether it makes sense to fund patents rather than collaborations with universities, which sometimes take quite a long time. Technology transfer may or may not happen, whereas funding patents can have an immediate effect and may offer a different perspective in the technology area.

• We operate with minimal margins in the automotive industry, and any impact of 1–2% pushes us toward break-even. We do not have margins of 10–15% that would give us the luxury and flexibility to move easily and adapt. We are extremely, extremely tight in terms of margins. Therefore, we must be extremely careful with every decision we make.