It seems that everybody in Croatia wants to do business with the Chinese giant.
The largest Croatian cluster of small agricultural farmers, GoGreen, which includes more than 700 small family farms and other businesses, is nearing the end of the testing period for the first Croatian agricultural B2B marketplace CRONE, reports Poslovni.hr on January 31, 2017.
The virtual marketplace is a place for information about products of GoGreen members, as well as about the manufacturers themselves. It is already in contact with the Chinese-Bulgarian Centre for Promotion of Agricultural Cooperation APAC. The plan is to connect Croatian producers with retailers such as Alibaba.
Alan Slapar, the development manager of GoGreen and the founder of CRONE, said that the Croatian B2B marketplace should go into operation mid-February. He added that they were in talks with the Bulgarians about how to use CRONE to strengthen Croatian exports. “Alibaba and other Chinese retailers cooperate with Bulgaria through the APAC organization and in coordination with 16 countries from Eastern Europe, with the aim of selling quality products from the region on the Chinese and other markets.”
“Alibaba is just one potential partner in China, since it has a local competitor which is very close to it in the agricultural segment”, said Slapar. He pointed out that the first potential deal with the Chinese could be the export of dried figs and fig jams. “We could offer limited series of products of premium quality”, said Slapar. The idea about the possibility of exporting to China was born recently when it was announced that Alibaba was interested in investing in Zadar, and that some Croatian companies, for example MSAN Group and Agrokor, were interested in working together with the Chinese.
Sources close to the Ministry of Agriculture say that the Chinese have shown interest in importing food from Croatia, especially through well-established channels such as APAC. Alan Slapar said that the goal of CRONE was to break down the barriers which small Croatian agricultural startups face on their way to foreign markets and to local wholesalers in the HoReCa channel. “CRONE will be free, because GoGreen believes that increasing transparency in the system of food production in Croatia can help quality producers”, said Slapar.
He added that the Croatian producers will get a powerful new tool with CRONE. “We will provide them with information how to accurately label products, how to officially declare their contents, which analyses they need to carry out in order to have a proper market product and enable their placement on the shelves of retail large chains”, said Slapar. All producers will be presented together with all relevant data, including financial results, quality controls, production facilities and the number of shipped products.
