Beneficiaries under the national agricultural support schemes of the Agricultural and Rural Development Agency (ARDA), which support thousands of farmers across Albania, are materializing their investment plans to build new workplaces and improve technology in a bid to improve quality.

Ilir and Orbelin are two brothers from the town of Permet, who run a leading and one of the most successful enterprises specializing in the cultivation, collection and sale of medicinal plants and spices, in the rural area of ​​Farka in Tirana. The two have established a modern collection, storage and medicinal herbs processing facility, involving farmers from all over the country.

Prime Minister Edi Rama, accompanied by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Frida Krifca, saw first-hand the collection and storage facility. Agriculture Minister Krifca explained how they accessed this market, adding that the two young entrepreneurs are largely focusing on the domestic market. 

“Orbelin and Ilir are two young professionals from Permet, who embarked on their crazy idea in 2014, after a one-year market research activity to collect and process herbs from the area they were familiar with and process them into packages as an end product for the Albanian consumer. While all the medicinal herbs processing factories primarily eye the international market, the two young men focused on the domestic market. They collect over 50 metric tonnes of aromatic herbs and medicinal plants from 50 farmers and they process these plants and sell to some 1500 domestic customers. The two base their activity on this collection and storage facility that has been built from scratch,” Agriculture Minister Krifca said, adding that Albania’s agricultural exports rose 20% year-on-year in quantity and value until end of August.

“The two are beneficiaries under the IPARD II Programme, measure 7, that focuses on farm diversification projects. What we have delivered through the IPARD III Programme is that we have sought to provide farmers and agricultural enterprises with the opportunity to process their products, which was not actually part of the IPARD II Programme-funded projects. Agricultural exports grew in quantity and value by 20% until end of August,” she said.

Meanwhile, one of the entrepreneurs said that interest in their products has increased significantly: “we procure and secure around 90% of the product from farmers and some standardized factories operating for Europe and the United States that produce ready-made products. Market is showing growing interest in such products. Our production and sales grow by 30 to 40% each year since we launched this business. We have received many requests for export, but we refrained from making hasted decisions, as we wanted to build a stronger image, build more confidence about what we do. We know that this investment still needs to expand. Agriculture has changed a lot in these 10 years that we have been in the market, not only in quantity, but also in quality,” he said.