Rīgas Miesnieks: It's Important to Make Fast Decisions In the current economic situation, it is important to make fast decisions and cut costs. (Dienas Bizness, Sandra Dieziņa, sandrad@db.lv, 67084441) This was said by Aldis Škutāns, Board Manager of A/S Rīgas Miesnieks, Latvia's largest meat processor, at the breakfast for business people organised by the newspaper Dienas Bizness. He pointed out that it is important to strengthen the existing successful products and services and to identify the needs of customers. If the company has permitted few mistakes and has not been considering further future, then now it is doing everything to analyse the weak points, and decisions are taken as quickly as possible because "there is no time for discussions right now”. Furthermore, every decision should be based on data. Assessing the situation in the market, Aldis Škutāns pointed out that the competition has remained unfair because "one company imports illegal meat, another company has tax debts, and another company pays illegal salaries”. There are currently about ten major and about thirty minor players in the market and these numbers affect it considerably. Aldis Škutāns thinks that the solution to this is the specialisation of the companies, which would result in not more than five major players. According to him, the share of illegally imported meat in the market is 30 per cent; it is, however, less than before, when the alleged share of illegal meat was even up to 50 per cent. Furthermore, his opinion is that strict standards should be implemented for meat products, like they were in the Soviet times, when the meat content in meat products was regulated. With a market share of 21 per cent, Rīgas Miesnieks is Latvia's market leader; currently, the company is considering export opportunities. It plans to increase its export to Russia already this autumn; for this, the company needs to receive the export permit, in which it has not succeeded so far. Aldis Škutāns named dumplings, smoked products and cooked sausages in natural casing as export products in the Baltic countries. According to the unaudited data, the company's turnover in 2008 was 26.65 million lats, which was 3.3 million lats more than in 2007. In the first month of this year the turnover of Rīgas Miesnieks was similar to that in January 2007.