VALtronic: Long-term partnerships are at the base of success
In 2022, electrical equipment manufacturer and trader VALtronic celebrated its 30th anniversary and that was a good occasion to take stock of everything. The company started working in the well-developed tradition of machine tools manufacture in Bulgaria. It is no coincidence that the first products manufactured in the 90’s were exactly fuse boards for machine tools. “In 1992, we started off as an engineering and manufacturing company in the field of industrial control and industrial automation, power supply to industrial and public buildings, and industrial electrical installations,” manager Valeri Karadzhov recalls today.
VALtronic’s activities in the field of trade were the logical continuation of those in manufacture and started just two years after the company’s establishment. The partnerships with manufacturing suppliers in the field of industrial electrical installations developed gradually. VALtronic became the distributor for well-established global manufacturers. The company opened offices and 6 retail centres in Sofia, Plovdiv, Stara Zagora, Burgas, and Varna.
Along with the industrial automation, today VALtronic constructs systems for power supply and building automation for large administrative, industrial and commercial buildings. These are not just local projects. The company develops projects in Greece, Ukraine and Switzerland, as well. Among the buildings that the company has worked on are the National Assembly, commercial centres all around Bulgaria and waste water treatment plants, among many others.
Their journey so far would not have been possible without the reliable partners, who encouraged them to overcome the inevitable hardships. “The transition to a market economy was accompanied by several severe crises, such as the global economic crisis of 2007–2009 and the internal one in 1997,” Valeri Karadzhov notes. “We have overcome them with the help of our financial partners. The main bank we have been cooperating with for the last 20 years is ProCredit Bank”.
VALtronic’s partners found ProCredit Bank’s proactivity striking from the very beginning of their working relationship. “We had been working with several banks, but ProCredit got us with their experts’ initiative: they were the first to approach us, as we were in line with their profile of a small and medium-sized business bank”. The enthusiasm and professionalism of the financial institution’s experts continues to impress VALtronic’s management to the present day: in many cases, they provide signals for market changes, market entrances of new products, new conditions, as well as other types of useful and timely business information. ProCredit Bank naturally became not only the main servicing bank, but also the leading credit institution for the developing business.
The bank's support not only inspires dreams, but also helps to realize them. The first substantial financing for the company’s scale was granted for the purchase of a plot of land with two buildings in Sofia and their major renovation.
At the moment, the company is expecting the completion of the design of a building on the same plot in Sofia, which will join the warehouse base, the logistics and the manufacturing in one place. Logically, the partner in the implementation of this larger-scale project will again be ProCredit Bank.
And VALtronic’s development will not stop here. The company possesses 18 decares of industrial land in Vratsa, which according to the manager is “very suitable for the construction of a solar park”. Meanwhile, ProCredit Bank encourages various initiatives related to the wider use of renewable energy sources. Considering such intentions, the Bank invited Mr. Karadzhov to the official opening of the solar park, which the ProCredit Group opened Kosovo. “The visit to this large-scale forum was not only interesting, but also useful for us,” VALtronic’s manager admits. For him, this was an occasion to make beneficial contacts with people, who work on similar projects in Bulgaria and abroad, and with whom he can cooperate by sharing advice and expertise.
For VALtronic, good partnerships are much more important in business than good conditions. Similar visions and ideas for development are a prerequisite for a beneficial cooperation, and where there is an initiative and a helping hand on one side, it provokes the other side for growth. This is why VALtronic continues to rely on ProCredit Bank’s support for its business development today, 20 years after that first meeting.
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