The dairy sector is in an unenviable position and Agrokor and Vindija seem to have a solution.
The representatives of the Agrokor concern, Konzum retail chain and the Vindija Group have held a meeting on Thursday regarding the Croatian dairy market, where the amounts of the produced and sold local milk have been continually decreasing, reports liderpress.hr on May 20, 2016.
Konzum, the largest domestic grocery store chain, according to its owner Agrokor, will provide an even stronger support and even more space to the Croatian milk producers in the upcoming period in order not to allow a complete devastation of the diary sector. Both sides have confirmed their partnership and emphasized the need for the organized assistance to this sector.
The production of milk in Croatia in the past years has been decreasing and many are giving up, while the representatives of the agricultural, dairy and cattle breeding associations have been warning for a long time that the situation in the dairy industry is very hard. The biggest problems, they said, are the drop in purchase prices, the large volume of milk imports, dumping prices in the shopping malls, fragmented land plots, and problems with availability of the state agricultural land.
Many EU countries are also encountering problems in the dairy sector, mostly as a result of the increased milk production in the European Union after the production quotas have been removed and after the Russian embargo.
Croatian Minister of Agriculture Davor Romić said on Tuesday in Brussels, where he participated in the meeting of the ministers of agriculture of the European Union member states, that Croatia has initiated a debate related to the difficulties faced by the milk producers. “As the production of milk increases in the EU, the pressure on the producers in Croatia is also increasing and they are, unfortunately, giving up the milk production. We will inform the Commission about our requests to introduce assistance measures to the milk producers, same as the last year, and other measures that we are ready to implement on our own to save this sensitive sector from a collapse”, explained Romić.
