Agricultural Cooperative ” Srebrenica”, whose main activity is the cultivation of raspberries, and cultivation and storing berries, achieved smaller profit last year despite the damage that heavy rains and floods caused to the fruit plantations.
Cooperative continues with same activities, but plans to expand the production of raspberries and blackberries and plantations of these fruits, as well as to increase the capacity of refrigerators used for storage, said director of this cooperative, Ivan Todić.
”In last 2 years we have built refrigerator whose storage capacity is 300 tons of berries. Considering that we have possibility to pick fruits from our plantations and buy from our cooperatives twice as big amount of fruits as this capacity, this year we will expand refrigerators”, said Todić.
He highlighted that in this way they wanted to expand their capacity and build a tunnel for deep freezing of berries, which will not be offered immediately to the consumers, but when the market offers the best price or it will be used for processing in the cooperative facility for the production of fruit wines or other products made from raspberries and blackberries.
After storage, this cooperative packs the most of the purchased quantities of fruit, and delivers it to their strategic partner, ''Mondi'' company from Kraljevo, with whom they have a contract on cooperation, which allowed them to build their own storage capacities.
Last year, the cooperative bought 300 tons of raspberries and blackberries from local farmers from municipalities of Bratunac and Srebrenica, and picked 70 tons of fruits from their own plantations.
This year, they are planning to double the amount, and to organize the purchase of strawberries which are increasingly cultivated in the middle Drina Valley.
(Source: faktor.ba)