New mushroom factory

By Arta Pllana

Hello and welcome ... this is UNMIK ON AIR

Last year a group of women from Kosovo’s rural areas gathered together in Djakovica/Djakova for a two-day business seminar, to learn more on how to establish and run small businesses.

Mira Komoni from Guska village, just outside of Gjakova, was one of the participants. She came to the seminar to learn how to make a proper business plan for her mushroom farm.

“I work as a manager in a mushroom manufactory in village Guska, which was build to employ women (who are missing their men from 1999). We started to work in 2002, but for financial and technical reasons we had to stop. I think this seminar and this training will help us a lot as far as managing the work and making a good business plan is concerned. For example, when we ask for donations they immediately ask us to provide a business plan. With a decent business plan we hope to get a donation and to restart the work.”

Now, a year after the seminar, Mira managed to restart the mushroom farm. As manager of ‘Ilirija A’ she supervises the 12 women working in the company and oversees the daily routine of picking produce, removing the ‘sick’ mushrooms and three times a day a temperature check.

Last month the women produced some 3.500 kg mushrooms. However, only 30 kg were sold so far. The rest is stored in the company’s depot.

“For better selling we need a machine for packing and cutting mushrooms. For the moment - you have seen it yourselves - we do it by hand. But when it’s done by hand the dimensions of the mushrooms are not the same as with machine. However, since we don’t have the machine’s we had to start this way” CUT

The absence of machinery to process and pack the mushrooms is the company’s main worry for the moment. Some 1.500 euros are needed to buy the necessary equipment. Not a big amount, but as Mira does not even have money to pay the employees of the company for the moment this is a big investment. This is why she wrote a project proposal and applied for donations with different organizations. Currently she is waiting for an answer from them.

“If we ensure the packaging and the cutter, we will have 100% success. We are in contact with Kosovar organizations and enterprises interested to sell our product, one of them is ELKOS located in Prishtina, Gjakova and other centers in Kosovo. They would like to sell our products but only under one condition: we have to have good packaging”.

Elkos Group in Pristina is one of the main distributors of food and beverages around Kosovo and lots of local producers ask to be included in the range of products they offer, but not all goods have the required quality level to attract customers.

Servet Abazi is Commercial Director of Elkos Group. She explains that packaging and presentation are essential when trying to make a product a success.

The packaging is very important; it should have a well-designed label and carry all information such as weight, period of usage etcetera.

The mushroom cultivators from village Guska asked our assistance in selling their product. But the champignons should be fermented and packed as are other types of mushrooms, otherwise it’s difficult to sell them. If they manage somehow to arrange this we can help a lot. Maybe we can sell even all their produce.

As currently 6.000 kg mushrooms per month are consumed in Kosovo, the Guska-based mushroom farm could easily cover half of that demand. Mira believes in the future no mushrooms need to be imported from elsewhere anymore.

Imported mushrooms come from China, Bulgaria and Macedonia. It is not necessary to get it from there. But for the moment we do not have the right packing here, so the retail companies are forced to by goods from abroad and to bring it into the Kosovo market. If we manage to get the machines for packing and cutting then I am 100% sure that our work will continue, will never close down and the product will be of a high quality

With the abundance of local and international goods on the Kosovo market simply making a high quality product is not enough. The women from ‘Ilirija A’ can only compete with the imported produce if they overcome also the last hurdle in their production process and start to deliver well processed, attractively looking and properly packaged mushrooms.