Sarantis Group has been working for 60 years in Greece and other markets in Europe and has been on the Athens Stock Exchange since 1994. From its role as a distributor in the 1960s, the company has grown to offer a combination of its own brands and those supplied through longstanding strategic partnerships and distribution agreements.
As well as its home country of Greece, the company has a presence throughout Central Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine. It has even gone further afield, selling into Portugal, the Philippines, and Australia.
“We are working very hard to create a proper organic growth system,” says Giannis Bouras, Deputy CEO of Sarantis Group. “Sarantis is a company that is focused on the territory of Central Eastern Europe, but in the beauty products category we are exploring potential in selective international expansions. We are growing organically by focusing on the core of the business, while continuously refining the business. At the same time, we are searching for new acquisition opportunities in high growth strategic priorities, having already marked a good track record of acquisitions in the region.”
The last 60 years have seen Sarantis enjoy a rich history of acquisitions and brand partnerships in Central and Eastern Europe, attaining a turnover of 482 million euros in 2023. It has done this by offering home care solutions such as garbage bags, aluminium foil, and baking paper from its factories in Poland and Ukraine. These products form a key part of Sarantis Group’s aggressive plans for future growth, including an expansion of its manufacturing footprint to meet demand in markets such as beauty and personal care products.
“We have eight different manufacturing sites, four of which joined the company through our acquisition of a large company serving the homecare solution categories, Stella Pack,” Bousas says. “The acquisition has made Poland our biggest market.”
The Group is on the Athens Stock Exchange it is still majority-owned by the Sarantis family, and that family-owned quality is still a key part of the company’s ethos. It is part of what makes Sarantis Group a unique company in Central Eastern Europe’s FMCG.
Local Insights, International Reach
Bouras puts Sarantis Group’s unique market position down to several factors. The first of these is that the company has an established distribution infrastructure that covers all the markets in which it operates. The firm directly controls over 100,000 distribution points.
“This makes for a winning proposition,” Bouras points out. “We are going to increase our investment in both the hard and soft skills of our people.”
These insights help inform Sarantis Group’s heavy investment in innovation, research, and development.
“It gives us a competitive advantage with our consumer investments,” says Bouras. “It means that we are designing for the consumers in the region, which multinationals cannot do. It is a point of differentiation between them and us. Yet at the same time, we have greater scale and agility relative to smaller companies.”
Sarantis Group’s goal is not to be a small multinational but to be a local company with scale.
“We grew over the years but kept the agility and speed-to-market of a small company,” Bouras says.
That agility is supported by the many investments Sarantis Group has made into the competitiveness of its supply chain, but the company is also investing in becoming a greener and more sustainable business, with a more circular economy and advanced recycling capabilities.
“For example, one of our objectives is currently to get from 80% of our production of garbage bags using recycling material to 100%,” Bouras says. “This is what we are doing to compete today, and in the future.”
A Challenging Environment
Of course, doing business in the markets that Sarantis Group does, there are major challenges to overcome, most notably, the war in Ukraine.
“We have business in Ukraine and own a factory there,” Bouras says. “That has not been easy. However, the resilience of our team in Ukraine and the Group as a whole has allowed the business to stay strong. In the last couple of years, we have actually had our highest profit ever for Ukraine, despite challenges for distribution, the movement of the population to different markets, and all the associated risks. It is a great example of resilience and agility from our team.”
It is clear talking to Giannis Bouras how much he values Sarantis Group’s people, and the company has invested a great deal in building and taking care of that team.
“One of the things we are working on is building the capabilities necessary for Sarantis Group to keep its journey going,” says Bouras. “We have been highlighting the differentiators that brought the company to where it is today, and we are looking at how to grow the business further in the future.”
The goal is to recruit people who not only have the necessary skills but also the necessary value system.
“The word ethos is a Greek word, and each letter of that word has a different meaning for Sarantis Group,” Bouras tells us.
Excellence, Trust, Humbleness, Ownership, Sustainability, E.T.H.O.S. It perfectly encapsulates Sarantis Group’s values and mission. The Group works within those values to recruit new people and develop and promote those people within the company.
“We are going to increase our investment in our people through both hard and soft skills,” says Bouras. “We have devoted time, effort, and dedication to this goal, and recently we have started expanding the business into Poland and Romania, sourcing new talent. At the same time, we are retaining more of our existing talent than ever before.”
This is part of an ongoing investment plan that will see the Group grow even further, doubling again in size from 2023 to 2028 through organic growth.
