Pepper slices from Lajkovac - Fruvela expands product portfolio and export destination list

Deep-frozen pepper - cubes and slices, is a new product in Fruvela's portfolio, and this most popular Serbian vegetable is going to be promoted all around the globe in 2013. One of the largest cold storage plants in Serbia, situated in Lajkovic, started processing bell peppers this year, thus making it possible for the production season at Fruvela to last for nearly eight months.

Vladimir Brkic, deputy director of Fruvela, says to our web portal that the cold storage plant has the capacity of 6,500 tonnes of deep-frozen goods. It also features processing lines for cherries, plums, apricots and bell peppers, as well as production lines for berry-like fruits - strawberry, raspberry and blackberry.

This company is 100% owned by Aleksandar Brkic, and the production potential of the cold storage plant with the current capacity ranges between 8 and 10 million euros per year.

Fruvela cooperates with a large number of manufacturers, either directly or through purchasers.

- Because of our product portfolio, which directly depends on both raw materials and the processing equipment we use, I must single out companies PiGo-R from Belgrade and Metal Inzenjering from Ivanjica. The quality of products of these companies has proved that processing machines made in Serbia do not lag behind those made by foreign manufacturers in any respect - says Brkic.

Export to Japan

Representatives of Fruvela have recently returned from a trade show in Kazakhstan. As Brkic notes, products from Serbia could take a significant place in that market.

- Kazakhstan is an exceptionally interesting market, very rich because of all the oil and gas, but also a bit disinterested in other business for the same reason. SIEPA did its part of the job extremely well - preparations for the trade show, booth setup and complete logistics, but I have an impression that the official institutions of our country, by which I primarily mean the embassy and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, could have made a bigger effort to create opportunities for Serbian companies to have so-called b2b meetings with the official business representatives of Kazakhstan. I underline this because I, personally, got so much useful information from my colleagues from the Polish pavilion (concretely, from the representatives of Fruvela's partners) and from our people who have been staying in Kazakhstan for a while now and who are absolutely familiar with local business trends. Kazakhstan is a country that imports about 60 percent of food products, and I am sure that Serbian products could become very significant in that market.

Fruvela in Serbia mainly works for other cold storage plants whose capacity is not big enough to handle, process and deep-freeze all the purchased fruits and vegetables, so that export revenues reach maximum 80 percent of the estimated potential. Fruvela exports its products to the markets of Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Germany, Austria, Poland and the Netherlands, and it is now in the process of initiating exports to Japan and Scandinavia. They are slowly preparing for a large show in Tokyo, and the Japanese market seems exceptionally interesting to them.

- Japan is deemed a highly stable and large market. In association with SIEPA, Fruvela is making plans to exhibit at the Foodex trade show in Tokyo in 2013 as well, hoping for the concretization of all the talks that were started last year.

Considering that our this year's exports to Russia have come up to almost the same level as exports to EU countries, Serbia's free trade agreement with Russia is of great use to us.

- The only thing we need to become fully competitive in the large market of Russia is a bit cheaper transport.

Missed opportunity for EUR 5 million exports

The company is not fully satisfied with business results in 2012 due to natural disasters and the situation in the country.

- An extremely strong winter, followed by a long drought during the season, left a mark on both quality and available quantities of fruits and vegetables. Instead of a New Year greeting card, the Ministry of Agriculture sent us a notice saying that export incentives for 2011 will not be paid. On the other hand, we were operating through Agrobanka, with which we had a very difficult cooperation given that they failed to provide us with a working capital for the season despite all their firm promises and guarantees. This is the reason why we missed an opportunity to contribute to the growth of Serbia's exports with about EUR 5 million, which is not an irreparable loss, but it is big enough to serve as a warning for official institutions to start taking more care of the drivers of business and regional development.

Projections for early 2013 exclusively concern the selection of an appopriate business bank willing to support Fruvela.

- I must remind you that Fruvela is one of the largest cold storage plants in Serbia, with the storage capacity of 6,500 tonnes and the deep-freezing capacity of about 10 tonnes per hour. We are mainly focused on processing stone fruits, and we also started producing bell peppers this year. With a suitable and timely monitoring by a business bank, projected exports should reach the aforementioned value of about EUR 5 million.

Pepper slices

Fruvela is famous in the global market for the quality of its stoneless cherries and mechanically sliced plums.

- We launched a new product this year - deep-frozen peppers (cubes and slices), so that we plan to fully promote this product in 2013.

Fruvela's orchards

In the following period, Fruvela will focus on the expansion of its production, that is, the introduction of a large number of new vegetable products, whereas the company's ten-year plan includes setting up its own orchards.

- Our plan is also to use renewable sources of energy - Brkic announces.

At the moment, Fruvela has about 34 permanent employees and about 200 seasonal workers.

- We expect to increase the number of permanent workers to about 50 in 2013 because of the increased volume of production.

M.K.