The government assistance continues for farmers’ projects on building new collection and refrigeration storage centres for agricultural produce and medicinal herbs through the national agriculture support schemes and the EU-funded IPARD Programme. 

Prime Minister Edi Rama, accompanied by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Frida Krifca, visited the newly-built collection and storage centre Riviera, one of the beneficiaries from the government’s support schemes and the IPARD Programme.

The agricultural collection centre has been recently built by four brothers, local residents in the municipality of Kamez, Tirana district, a model company that generates economy  and income for its owners, as well as for its employees, whose monthly wages amounts to over 50000 lek.

“Riviera shpk is one of the benefiting companies under the IPARD Programme. It is a brand new investment, launched from scratch. The company launched its investment in 2021. During this year alone, the first year of its operation, it has had a turnover of 200 million lek and its performance is well within the target of its business plan, but its potential is definitely much bigger,” Agriculture Minister Krifca said. 

Thanks to the support through a grant under the IPARD Programme, this new collection and storage centre features 12 refrigeration rooms with a capacity of 7,000 cubic meters, making it a reference center not only for the local farmers in Kamze, but for farmers all over Albania.

“This investment represents another stage, when we should process agricultural and food products domestically, and not limit ourselves to the exports collection system only. The processing industry has been now consolidated and will certainly further develop along its development lane, so to say. The new lane has been already opened, yet the processing lane will take more hard work. We should build the processing chain domestically, so that we can process sauces, preserves, jams, and other ingredients and products from processing so that not a single fruit or vegetable is thrown away. We can process the locally grown produce that fails to 100% meet the export standards and processing would become an added value,” Prime Minister Rama said.