Business breakthrough with C2C fund
"We applied on a public call published by the Challenge to Change project and received a grant of 10,000 euros, which is about 40% of the investment. We provided the rest of the funds by ourselves and procured a dryer with a closed drying system and the necessary additional equipment such as washing and cutting machines. It is expensive equipment that we would not be able to procure without the support of this fund, so the realization of this project would not be possible at all ", Denis Sehic, the owner, says.
During the previous season, they bought, processed and placed on the market large quantities of fruits and forest fruits, which indirectly encouraged the activity of a larger number of subcontractors. Mostly it was mushrooms and apples, and now it’s the season of rose hips and spruce beans.
“We have three full-time employees, but we hire a lot more workers during the season. For example, in the mushroom season we had 15 workers working on preparation for drying, washing and cutting. We bought mushrooms from as many as 60 pickers. We bought the fruit from 20 producers, and the plan is to organize the purchase and processing of vegetables as soon as the conditions for that are met. In order to do that, we need to get a refrigerator so that we can store larger quantities of vegetables. We have about 100 greenhouse producers nearby with whom we could go to the agreed production of tomatoes and peppers, which we would dry and sell to the confectionery industry ", Sehic says.
For now, they place their products on the domestic market. A slightly smaller quantity, through intermediaries, they place on the foreign markets. They are constantly working on improvement of their business.
