Lidl Invites Croatian Farmers to Place Their Products on Its Shelves

The retail chain Lidl, in collaboration with the Croatian Chamber of Economy, has launched the project “Taste Your Homeland” which aims to enable domestic producers of fruits and vegetables to place their products on the shelves of Lidl stores in Croatia.

Agricultural producer Zlatko Vinković has significantly expanded his production over 10 years of cooperation with this retail chain, now supplying potatoes and onions to 89 Lidl stores.

– My wife and I established our family farm 30 years ago, and with Lidl’s arrival, we realized they were looking for a serious supplier. Lidl has been with us from the first manual scale to today’s packing facility that packs 30 kilograms of potatoes per minute. We have grown together, and thanks to them, today we are a respectable company, said Zlatko Vinković.

Lidl representatives have invited all farmers in Croatia who deal with fruits and vegetables to apply for a public tender that lasts from today until December 15, 2016, so that their products can also reach the shelves of this store.

– About 85 percent of the fruits and vegetables we sell at Lidl are of Croatian origin. The goal of this initiative is to establish cooperation with domestic producers, to set them on their feet, to make them more competitive through seminars and education, and then to enable them to export their products through Lidl, said Lidl Management Board member Allen Halamić.

The entire project has been supported by the Croatian Chamber of Economy.

– At the CCE, we believe this is a great opportunity, a way to facilitate access for domestic fruit and vegetable producers to store shelves and enhance their competitiveness. There are even 34 thousand producers in the vegetable sector in Croatia, so we expect a large number of interested parties for this tender, said Božica Marković, director of the agriculture, food industry, and forestry sector at CCE.

The Vinković family primarily engages in the production and sale of onions and potatoes, which they cultivate on a total of 300 hectares of land. Around the Vinkovićs, there are another 10 cooperators, families from the Čakovec area, whose future, as well as tradition, has always been linked to agriculture and potato production.