• Ionuț Ilie is an experienced leader who coordinates the Romanian operations of the largest bakery company in the world.
• Interview conducted within the podcast "From the oven, into the future", created by Puratos to bring to the forefront the people and businesses that develop the bakery and confectionery industry in Romania.
Ionuț Ilie, CEO of Grupo Bimbo Romania, took over in 2023, bringing with him a solid experience of over 25 years in the FMCG sector. Today, he leads the transformation and development of one of the most important players in the Romanian bakery industry, through a clear vision focused on growth and innovation.
Its story unites international corporate expertise with the reality of a traditional Romanian brand, in an industry essential for the local economy.
1. As I started with other guests in the project, I would like to ask you about the specific product or taste from your childhood that has accompanied you throughout your life until now.
There are more, but the most important one is still my grandmother's bread. My grandparents were from the Oltenia area and it stuck in my mind – and I'm even trying to see if I can find a solution to translate this into a mass product – bread made with yeast. I don't know if you know what this means and how it's made, but for me this is the bread I know and the memory that comes back to me over and over again. That's how I found out that taste has a memory.
I would visit my grandparents every summer, spend a month or two there, and on the day of my arrival, my grandmother would bake a big loaf of bread in a clay oven. It was a clay lid, which she would heat with stalks, twigs, and light wood. Then she would put a layer of vine leaves on it so that it wouldn't stain the bread. She would turn all the coals around the oven, and in 40-45 minutes she would take out a big, round loaf of bread weighing two and a half kilograms, even three, which was risen, steaming, and very, very moist. A very dense bread. That bread with a grilled chicken, on the coals, and with garlic, and, on the days when I didn't eat bread, with polenta, are still on my mind now.
Now I understand that the place you've arrived at has meaning...
Not to "I give everything from home", but I can say that the year I left Unilever, after 26 years, I had two interviews in the bakery industry. And I didn't go for them, they came for me and I said to myself then: "I think I have to go there, I don't see any other solution."
2. Many leaders come with experiences from different industries before arriving in the bakery industry. Ionuț, you have built an impressive career in the consumer goods sector. What made you take the step towards Grupo Bimbo and the bakery industry?
Nothing determined me, it was just a coincidence. I worked for many years in one company. I have a type of conservatism and loyalty to the places where I feel good and where I managed to build myself and build a business and teams.
And I didn't specifically have in mind that I wanted to leave, but that's how it happened. I had a set of interviews where "chemistry" It was absolutely perfect. And, more than that, what attracted me the most is that I had the freedom to do as I saw fit. Obviously, within certain parameters, but different from the company I worked for, which was extremely structured and matrixed, with a very matrixed management from top to bottom and at a European level and, well, clustered, where business decisions were relatively limited. You could move within relatively narrow parameters.
Grupo Bimbo gave me the freedom to act as I wanted and as I saw fit, as long as we delivered what we had committed to and promised. And that was it. "the hook" for me to take this step.
3. In such a competitive category, the products offered to consumers must bring something extra to convince. How do Vel Pitar products rank in this segment?
Vel Pitar has developed very solidly and healthily over the years. It is made up of a conglomerate of bread factories, as we knew them from when we were children, and which has generally preserved the recipes, the way bread was made at that time, and tried to take them to another level.
In bread, as in any food product, it's about taste first and foremost, and replicating and preserving it consistently and continuously, so recipes are important. So is the quality of the product and the quality of the process that you carry out there, so that whatever type of ingredients you use, at the end of the line comes out the same type of bread, with the same taste. And, in principle, Vel Pitar does that.
Grupo Bimbo came with a different expertise and, although people might have expected Grupo Bimbo to come to the Romanian market with other types of bread, the reality is that they took a lot of expertise and a different way of making bread from here that they are taking back to the group and launching in various parts of the world, because the way we make bread is special.
In general, this Balkan area, probably under the influence of the Ottoman Empire, developed a multitude of types of bread and, perhaps not coincidentally, the largest consumer of bread per capita in the world is Turkey, with Romania coming in second place.
In the Balkans, in general, consumption is very high. And in Bulgaria, and in Serbia, and in this whole Balkan area, bread consumption is generally 70%, 100% higher than in Western Europe.
4. What does quality bread mean to you personally?
I like dense and very moist breads. But I have also discovered the other extreme: very moist breads. fluffy, extremely elastic, which also have their charm.
It depends on what you eat. I generally like to assort the bread I eat with the right types of food. Because a dense and very hydrated bread is a heavy bread and does not go with a very heavy food. And then I choose for a heavy food, a light bread, a very airy bread. And for a lighter food, a denser and flavorful bread. I like to feel the slightly salty taste, I like to feel the slightly sour taste, I like to feel that dense and full core.
5. Are all of these found in Vel Pitar breads?
Without a doubt! We cover almost the entire range. We do not cover, at this moment, breads with very, very high hydration. But we are thinking about that too. It is not something we do not know or cannot do. At this moment we have a very broad portfolio that comes after a series of acquisitions in series. And our concern at this moment is to clarify what portfolio means, to segment the types of bread, not to overlap.
Because when you make acquisitions, inevitably, some segments were competitors or have the same type of recipes or the same type of taste. Then you have to find a solution to simplify the portfolio a little so you can focus better.
6. How have you, at the company level, perceived the change in the behavior of the Romanian consumer? What does he want now, in the present, from a bread to put on the table?
I wouldn't say that the Romanian consumer in the bread category moves very quickly with changing tastes. Obviously, he has adopted and is starting to consume breads that are slightly different from what we know from our childhood, but the market shows us very clearly that the loaf still represents 60-65-70% of this market, it is our traditional bread, from the communist period, and it is quite obvious that people are having a hard time giving it up.
On the other hand, I think that the Romanian consumer is extremely attentive to the quality and the ingredients from which the bread is made. Because, in the interaction with consumers, with female consumers more so and especially with young mothers, I heard this comment, which didn't necessarily surprise me, but when I heard it, it was like a "aha moment", in which they said: "Bread is the food I most often give to my children.". "I demand that at least the bread be clean". And "cleanse" has a special meaning in food. It's about not using ingredients that consumers consider to be avoided. And whether we like it or not, it's neither negative nor positive, the loaf is a bread that is made from four ingredients: flour, yeast, water and salt. And it serves, so to speak, the interests of Romanians.
But what feels really great is that all the recent nutritional trends are drawing consumers towards breads made from more special flours: with very high fiber content, with, I don't know, high rye content, which has a lower glycemic level, breads with seed mixtures, so with additional benefits and with special taste patinas. And the segment is growing and you can feel it. But it's still small compared to the bread consumer base.
Obviously, it is also moving towards more modern trends, such as gluten-free bread. There is currently no gluten-free product at Vel Pitar, but we will definitely do it. Now, I have a different opinion on this matter. Obviously, there are people who have difficulties or, well, have health problems and have a harder time tolerating gluten. And, without a doubt, they need a solution for this situation, but things have gone beyond that. It has become a trend, so why not do this? We have been eating bread for 10.000 years and bread, in general, has helped humanity travel longer distances, because you could take a nutritious food with you. There are some exaggerations in certain areas… But I am a bread eater, I will remain a bread eater, I like it and, in the end, moderation is the best solution for any balance.
7. Since you have been in this position at Bimbo Romania, if you had to think of a single defining moment, what would it be? Whether we are talking about an achievement or a failure.
I came here with few expectations, but with the desire to do things. As I said at the beginning, the fact that I was given the freedom to organize myself, to build my team, to build my processes the way I wanted was, in fact, the most important thing "hook" for me.
And that's what I did: I came, I tried to understand what was happening, how it was happening, to understand the industry – that it was very different from what I had done before – to understand these adjacent things, logistics, the way things are done. Because Vel Pitar is a very integrated business, with its own logistics system, with warehouses, with a sales team, with a delivery team. This is not very common. Most companies have separated and outsourced some of these services. And then they are not your responsibility or they are services that you receive.
In Vel Pitar, everything is inside and for me it was very interesting to understand and see how they work, like this, the smaller pieces into a unified whole and to find these buttons of fine tuning so that we can do even better than we did, so that we can be more efficient, more productive and grow.
If I had to name one thing that I think I did well, it's that I took over a 160 million business and now, after 3 years, it's almost doubled in size and that I managed to do this from very small pieces, in a Vel Pitar that, in turn, was not yet fully integrated, because it was a collection of factories and smaller businesses brought together. In addition, after some more acquisitions, we managed to grow on the same basis, measuredly, we managed to keep things together and give meaning to all the people in the team, which seems to me a fabulous gain. This while building a team of almost nine leadershipBasically 70% of the people there are new people, from various industries, that I managed to bring in and put together, to do things well and to draw up much grander plans than the ones I've made so far.
8. Like any large company, Grupo Bimbo is committed to this race towards sustainability. How is this implemented in Romania?
When I came to Grupo Bimbo, I didn't know much about the company, even though I came from FMCG and knew pretty much everything that was happening not only in the industry I worked in, but also in adjacent industries such as pharma, auto, white goods, electronics. I knew all the big companies with financial data, with detailed things. When I was told it was Grupo Bimbo I asked myself the question: "Who is Grupo Bimbo?" Because I didn't really know...
I discovered this company and the way they do business impressed me the most. Because I haven't seen such things even in companies that are older, bigger and more structured than Grupo Bimbo. Very few people know that Grupo Bimbo in Mexico is almost 100% electrified, produces its own electric trucks, produces its own forklift-automated machines, produces its spare parts in 3D, designed and made by a group of engineers based in Mexico City, parts that are then 3D printed around the world, especially in the Americas, less so in Europe for now. Grupo Bimbo has an almost completely automated logistics system and recycles almost everything it can. I was surprised, starting from the idea that they are, after all, bakers, only to realize how things really are…
We take on these aspects here and have absolutely special attention to everything that means waste and for everything that can be reused in production, especially when we are talking about raw materials for food. We want to eliminate as much food waste of any kind as possible and reuse what can be reused in processes within the company.
We have 11 solar panel projects underway right now, precisely to use sustainable energy. We have heat recovery units on almost all of our lines, precisely to not waste energy that would go into the air. We have a very precise program regarding water used, consumption in general, reuse of wastewater and so on.
We are there and we are well positioned, because in the industry we are, by far, the top. All this means costs but it is part of the company's DNA and it is not a choice, it is a way of working. When I took over Vel Pitar, I am not saying that they were doing things wrong, but there was not a very precise focus on this area of sustainability. But Grupo Bimbo has a very established sustainability program and, step by step, we are introducing all the elements that are mandatory in the group.
9. How do you see the future of the bakery industry and what directions will you implement for the next 5 years?
I think the market is still extremely fragmented. There are some specific trends in some areas, like we were talking about gluten-free, and others like artisanal bakery, bake off and other things like that. We're moving towards all of these things.
Grupo Bimbo is a company that wants to make everything that is made from flour, because we are talking about corn flour here. Not everyone knows that Grupo Bimbo is the owner of the Takis brand, which we launched here a few years ago and which is a real success. I didn't even know that this brand existed, being a brand Mainly by TikTok or that developed on social media. When we introduced it to the Romanian market everyone was asking: "Takis? Are you bringing Takis?" Not being a big fan of social media – although I use it, I try my best not to spend too much time there and TikTok is not something I follow on a regular basis – I didn’t know much about the brand at the time. But we discovered it, we launched it, we did a really good job and we are very well positioned in the market with it.
So Bimbo wants to do anything that's made from flour, in any form and in any way. Obviously we have priorities. We're focusing on everything that means consolidation, integration, so that we act as a united body and with very clear direction. And we have very big plans to expand into all kinds of areas.
10. Is there a specific segment close to your soul that you want to develop?
I would really like to market and be able to replicate it in an industrial format… and here I have to make a parenthesis. This connotation of industrial seems strange on the Romanian market, but I don't see it that way. Flour is mixed the same way regardless of whether you mix it in a one-ton cauldron or in the pot on grandma's porch where we used to make dough from 5 kg of flour at a time. And in much more hygienic conditions, without question. The way bread is made is absolutely identical. Nothing has changed! Obviously, there are machines that do these things instead of people and that it is a much better controlled and better dosed process than grandma could ever have done.
Returning to the previous idea, I really want to find solutions to put some traditional recipes in a format that people can recognize and when they have tasted the product, say: "Ah! That's what my grandmother did, or my mother, or my aunt!" And that's what I really want, besides bread. I would like to find a solution to make bread on the test, in a format like that, in large volumes. It's very complicated, because it's a specific process and that way of baking in a closed device and in that ash mixture, it's a combination there that's not easy to reproduce. I would really like to be able to do that.
11. If you could go back in time and give one piece of advice to Ionuț at the beginning of his career, what would it be?
We had the chance, or the misfortune depending on how you look at things, to grow up in a time when school had a certain way of doing things, relationships between people were governed by some elements, which were not necessarily positive or happy.
If I found myself many years ago, say 40 years ago, I would educate myself very thoroughly on what it means Emotional intelligence, communication, human relations, diplomacy, things like that, which I didn't have. At that time it was good to "sit in your seat", don't comment too much, don't stand out, don't do this, don't do that... I said in my circle of friends and close people that I and maybe many other children like me, who grew up in a totalitarian system and with some strict rules imposed, were 10 years late in our lives. Because no matter how much school you did, no matter how much skillsTechnical or very specific skills you had in certain areas, this area of business, development, working with people, was not something we knew. And my chance in the company I worked for was to discover these things.
I had the chance to enter the early stages of these companies in this market, companies that understood that we were not prepared in this area and invested enormously in our development as professionals but also as people. And for me it was a fabulous school and if I could do anything for myself, the 18-year-old, it would be to have access to this aspect of development.
As a professional, I don't think I would change many things. Maybe a little more rigor than I manage to impose on myself would help, although I am absolutely aware that, in general, rigor and very tight structure kill creativity or give, in a way, an inverse dynamic. I have always liked to be the person who thinks. lateral, putting things together that have no connection to each other and that helps me a lot in everything I do.
I would advise someone entering a company like this to be patient and understand the business. There are many companies that make this mistake: they mergers in various markets and want to transform into running step what they bought into what they are themselves. When you buy a competitor or buy a company in the market, you don't buy it because it's doing badly, you buy it because it's doing well and doing things a certain way. And then it would be good to preserve what those people do well and bring your share of science and know-how and of the two to do more.
I've seen many acquisitions turn into major failures because there's not this patience in understanding what that business does, what it does differently and what it does better than you, and how you can transform it and bring the knowledge you have at the company level to this business.
Because, in the end, businesses, above all, are made by people, and the key to a good integration and acquisition are still people - from there and beyond - and how you get them to work together, collaborate and cooperate.
Interview conducted by Gabriela Dan, Editor-in-Chief of Arta Albă
Read on White Art and: Bimbo Romania: The global bakery leader reports solid results on the local market in 2025
