Ministerial Development and Business Congress for the countries of the Mediterranean Basin, Presentation by Mr. Panos Zeritis, Chairman of THRACE PAPER MILL S.A., Athens, 3-5 February 2005

For our main activities, Tissue production and Tissue trade, our [group] targets are the domestic as well as the neighboring markets.

In the ‘80s (1983/1987) already sensing the difficulties to come in Greece, we chose Egypt as the first country to expand. Once again we had as primary strategy to dominate Egypt’s local market as well as to set foot to the markets of the Arab, Mediterranean and African countries.

Right after came the privatization projects in the ex-communist countries which led us to the purchase PISZKEI and ST. ANDRE PAPER MILLS in Hungary (1994) and BELOVO PAPER MILL S.A. in Bulgaria (1998), where apart to the local market advantages we realized that we could benefit from the vicinity and connections of Hungary and Bulgaria to the other ex-communist countries that were “thirsty” for higher quality products that we could provide.

Hungary was selected as the basis for production that targeted also the neighbor E.U. markets.

Given our experience and our dominant position in the markets we operate, we find that today competition also happens on the local level as well, where countries free to exercise independent monetary policy seek to penetrate markets of countries linked to the Euro that due to a common policy are unable to react monetary...

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