Historical Profile

ENA TRADE S.A. was established at Thessaloniki, Greece in 1995 as an asset management company, under the name ENA FINANCE S.A..

In 1999, it was taken over by Mr. Saki Kadinopoulos when he decided to differentiate himself from the family business and assets, was diverted into a commercial company under its new appropriate name, and commenced with its main activity being the local and international trade of commodities. Mainly in the sectors of cereals, rice, sugar and oilseeds, both in their primary agricultural form but also after industrial processes in various ways. Recently the involvement in seeds and various oils for biodiesel production has picked up.

It has through the years been staffed by 5 to 10 very experienced employees, all with long local crop origination, shipments and back-office experience. Its policy was based on acting as an independent Greek trader, soon supplying selective Greek, European, Turkish and Middle East users with their relative raw materials, by drawing on the large clientele and contacts base that the owner had established through the years of trading with his previous companies or through his EU positions.

At this point, reference has to be made to relative companies that the owner and key personnel were involved in, both before and after the establishment of this company, and provided the concentrated experience in ENA TRADE SA today.

As of 1981 with Greece’s admission to the EU, Mr. S. Kadinopoulos takes over the responsibility of expanding the international affairs of the family interior commodity trading company – P.Kadinopoulos S.A. – and in 1991 becomes Managing Director, maintaining at the same time the position of International Sales Manager. During this period, the company maintains a large origination network all over the country and was for many years between the 50 largest Greek commercial/industrial companies in turnover, second in its sector only to the State owned Union of Agricultural Co-operatives (KYDEP), operating four industrial and storage plants with over 100 employees, with annual sales of 40-60 million euros. Basic activities were in the cereals and cotton sectors and by then strongly export oriented.

In 1985, a new company PROGRAIN SA is established in Athens, jointhly with Grains et Fourrages SA of Geneva in an even partnership, in order to import and trade cereals for milling and feed use independently of the main exporting company. For a period of 10 years, imports were running successfully at around 200-300.000 mt annually, with a annual turnover of 15-20 million euros, operating through most of the large state and private port facilities in Greece. The company stopped operations in 1997, as a restructure of EU Vat regulations made the company obsolete, as anyone could import thereafter directly, without the need of a local fiscal structure.

In 1985, the owner becomes a founding member of SEEDYZ, the Greek Cereal Exporters’ Association, and for many years up to today he is elected either Vice-president or Secretary General, whereas during 1993 - 1995 he was honored to be President of the union. Has represented the Greek Association to many European Union committees and specialists’ boards in Brussels and participates in many international congresses.

In 1999 again, the owner creates –as a 25% shareholder– and manages HERBA HELLAS S.A., a joint venture in Greece with the largest Spanish food group HERBA FOODS, who was at the time interested in gaining access to the big local EU Intervention paddy rice stocks. This proved a very successful co-operation, based on the origination of Greek paddy rice, both from EU stocks and consecutive annual crops, toll-milling operations and exports with a yearly turnover of 10-15 million euros. This company also studied a multitude of possible investments, ranging from the purchase of a number of State-owned Serbian sugar factories (sugar suppliers at the time to Ena Trade) to the buy-out of a main silo installation in Thessaloniki and others. The main shareholders decided to seize operations in 2007, with the end of EU Intervention stocks.

In this period, ENA TRADE S.A. enters into the sugar import business, based on the new EU regulations from imports from Western Balkans and ACP countries. Soon it becomes the 2nd largest distributor of sugan in Greece, after the Hellenic Sugar Industry. It terminates sugar imports in 2007 after European sugar factories enter directly our products in the Greek market.

In 2004, the buy-out by Herba Hellas of the oldest active (1926) Greek pasta company ABEZ SA of Thessaloniki has been prompted by Herba Foods, in order to acquire a well-known local brand name in the food sector, in order to add rice consumer products of the Spanish group into Greece and expand the group into the Balkans. The project was finally rejected by them at the end and undertaken eventually by ENA TRADE SA on its own. The later after a strong boost of the company’s market position, that more than doubled its turnover and its local market share within the following 3 years, accepted an offer to sell the pasta production and brand name and terminate this operation in 2008.

During these more than fifteen years, ENA TRADE SA became one of the 3-4 main competitors in the local wholesale food market, sustaining excellent personal relations with its clients and suppliers, due to the long familiarity and loyal reaction of local and international markets to the company owner’s name. All these, irrelevant to the life cycle of companies or to differentiations of shareholder’ concepts.

ENA TRADE S.A. operated always with a very low hardware exposure, as all activities were functioning through rented silos and offices and trading was mostly done directly from producers’ to buyers’ stores. Silos were operated near the port of Thessaloniki for the preparation of export contracts by vessels and logistics stores were used for imported goods and their distribution. For the required industrial preparation of various contracts, a number of mills in the area were each year assigned on toll-milling agreements, in rice and flour.

This way of operation, although less costly, did not allow the company to have assets that would be easily financed by banks to increase turnover and profitability, being its basic restrain on turnover. The average annual company turnover for the first 10 years was in the region of 7-10 million €. Since then, trade of commodities with heavy finance needs has been abolished (sugar) as local banks in the recent years avoid trade-finance and the company is turning its profile more towards the international brokerage of commodities than trade itself.

Since 2010, all operations are concentrated within ENA TRADE SA, to which were soon added, due to the experience gained previously in the rice sector, a number of technical company representations in the rice industry. As such, in 2013 the company accepted the proposal to represent in Greece rice plant manufacturers Multigrain SA of Turkey and Zaccaria milling machinery of Brazil. In 2016, industrial paddy dryers Suncue of Taiwan were added and recently an internet market platform for paddy rice in Greece.