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Macedonian Dried Vegetables Conquer European Markets
 Sushara
Lars, founded in 1985, is a Macedonian pioneer
in processing dehydrated vegetables. The company
was privatized in 2000, which allowed custom
designed drying facilities, Lars produces high
quality dried food ingredients such as cabbage,
leek, green beans, pepper, broccoli, spinach and
cauliflower, and meets very strict food safety
and quality requirements.
Individual farmers provide quality raw materials
to Lars. Through contract farming agreements,
the company provides seeds and fertilizer to
their pro-ducers, which assures sustainable
production and continuity of product quality.
Lars supplies a few Macedonian food companies
with dehydrated products, but the majority of
their production is exported to both regional
and EU markets such as Holland, Germany, Italy,
Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro and Greece.
As one of the key players in the Macedonian
vegetable processing industy, Lars is mading a
significant contribution to enhancing the the
competitiveness of the processed vegetables
value chain. USAID’s AgBiz Program recognized
Lars as good potential customer, and on July 3,
2008 awarded Lars with $20,000 to implement the
project “Improve and Increase the Productivity
and Capacity of Vegetables Drying”. The total
value of the project is $196,928.
Less than six months after the Grant Agreement
Signing Ceremony, the project had helped Lars to
upgrade its position as the leading Macedonian
producer, marketer and supplier of dehydrated
products. AgBiz helped Lars secure additional
equipment including a centrifuge for preparing
vegetables for drying. The centrifuge increased
productivity by 25%, reduced production costs by
20%, assured environmentally friendly production
and thus enabled the company to export more
dehydrated products. This enabled them buy up to
16 tons per day of raw materials grown by local
producers, in comparison to 12 tons before the
AgBiz supported project. In 2009, Lars will
increase their exports by nearly 20% to regional
and international markets.
Lars has become a more reliable and just-in-time
supplier of processed vegetables, following
strict quality and food hygiene/safety criteria,
building long-term partnerships with customers,
with a flexible pricing policy depending on and
in line with international market trends.
“After many contacts with people and companies
in Europe, and various market research studies,
we concluded that Macedonia has excellent
potential to export dehydrated vegetables and
fruits. This is the future for our company!”
said Mr. Darko Naskov, owner of Sushara Lars,
from Shtip.
USAID’s AgBiz Program provides a range of
support to agribusinesses. This includes
business expansions projects that will enhance
the export competitiveness of agribusinesses by
supporting training, marketing activities,
technical assistance, physical facilities
expansion and advanced equipment acquisition.
Most of the projects support the businesses to
move into value added products, develop or
expand share in new export markets, expand
processing or packing capacity and improve
productivity.
19 grants for export business ex-pansion
projects have been signed. The projects
supported by these grants are projected to
result in increased agriculture-based exports of
nearly $41 million. |
