Business Profile
www.bizpoland.pl
Poland’s king of bananas dreams of green tomatoes With a personal fortune estimated at 500 million pln and ranked by “Wprost” as the 41st richest Pole, a short visit to the office of Artur Toronowski leaves no doubt as to the source of his wealth.
The yellow couch in the waiting room is but a taste of what’s to come. Artificial palm trees stand in the corners of his office, walls are adorned with huge paintings of banana palm trees, and yellow is everywhere. Yellow sculptures of bananas, a yellow candle in the shape of a banana, yellow furniture, yellow blinds and yellow trash bins. Toronowski sits comfortably behind his desk, just in front of a map of the world, with markings of a central American ship’s journey to Antwerp and Gdansk. From there, trucks packed with bananas continue their journey to Citronex’s company head-
quarters in Zgorzelec, which borders the German border in southwestern Poland. Today, six out of ten bananas bought in Poland come via Citronex. The company sells bananas to Tesco, Carrefour, Plus, Biedronka, and Polomarket. Revenues for Citronex will likely exceed 600 million pln in 2010, of which profit may be approximately 40 million pln. Sixty percent ot that profit comes from the sale of bananas. The remainder is income from gas stations, truck wash locations and motels. While the 50-year old Toronowski may not court controversy directly, his colorful personality matches his colorful office. He’s re-
November 2010
cently given up his Ferrari 360 Moreno – replaced by a Mercedes GL worth 1.5 million pln – and has retired some of the more gaudy gold jewelry that was his trademark in the early days of building his business. But opponents accuse him of arrogance, and he still complains about a news article in a local newspaper that Zgorzelec city authorities looked the other way when he parked his Ferrari illegally in a disabled parking zone. He now spends part of his time on his yacht and pursuing his passion for fast motorbikes. While he has plenty of detractors, his supporters praise him for his entrepreneurship, having built up such a profitable firm in a short time that employs thousands of people in his region and sponsors sports clubs and supports various initiatives of the city.
From taxi driver to shopkeeper But before his ascent, Toronowski was an ordinary taxi driver in this town bordering Germany. In 1978, he was 18 years old and a taxi-driver with a Fiat 125. With his earnings from taxi-driving, he opened three ice cream shops and a grocery store. A few years later he moved to West Berlin, and from there, he was sending oranges and bananas back to his grocery stores. “I quickly noticed that bananas were selling better, so I decided to devote my time entirely to importing only bananas”, said Toronowski, who established the brand Citronex in 1988. But the main banana dealers were based in Antwerp, Europe’s largest port where most of Central America’s bananas enter Europe, and Toronowski wanted direct access. In Antwerp in 1993, he met Julian Goelans, owner of a Belgian firm importing bananas, who proceeded to teach Toronowski the “in’s-and-out’s” of the banana business. He explained that the transport ship runs at least two weeks, that bananas chilled at 14 degrees Celsius will not mature and will therefore not spoil during transit. That bananas have seven different levels of maturity - from the raw, green to the sweet, yellow with black spots, and that large customers have different requirements for a mature banana. Because in some stores, the banana may lie for four days, and therefore it should mature slowly over those days; in other stores, trade and volume may be faster, so the bananas must be the proper shade of yellow within one day.
Citronex swims into deep waters, and takes on big sharks After 1997, Toronowski began direct contacts to producers in Ecuador. But trouble began for Toronowski, as trucks loaded with bananas destined for Poland had to wait several days at the German-Polish border, just a few kilometres from the warehouse, and began to spoil. Toronowski, thinking of options and ways to fix the problem, decided to build a loading ramp at the railway crossing in Wegliniec, then leased a locomotive from Deutsche Bahn. Week after week, 50,000 cartons of bananas rolled off the ramp. By 2004 Citronex was the last 100%owned Polish company in the industry. Others had either gone bankrupt or were absorbed by American Chiquita. “We survived because over the years we have consistently rebuffed cooperation with U.S. companies. Other Polish importers signed contracts, which at first appeared lucrative, but required the company to import a larger number of bananas than they could sell”, said Toronowski. Then came a big breakthrough for the company: Poland’s accession to the European Union. When Brussels began to distribute licenses for the importation of bananas from Latin America, Citronex was well-positioned to get a license and then ordered directly from the manufacturers. From 2006, the company’s sales began to grow rapidly. And when Poland joined the EU, he closed the rail offloading ramp at Wegliniec and began to transport the bananas via cargo truck, which numbers have grown from 60 to 250 over the past four years.
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