As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marta Duic writes on the 3rd of September, 2020, Juraj Orehovec, a breeder of various types of poultry in Veliki Bukovac not far from Ludbreg, has been successfully building a business for 20 years. In order to achieve the most natural way of raising poultry, the stables on his farm are open, and they built everything right next to the river Plitvica so that they could dig water lagoons for their ducks and geese.
In the years which followed, they also started raising chickens, and a stable was built on the farm, where the chickens stay indoors for the first few weeks, and later have access to rich grassy areas. According to owner Juraj Orehovec, the focus of the business is primarily on free cultivation, which achieves high product quality.
They are launching an entire range, including indoor chickens and free-range chickens, roosters, ducks and geese, and recently a new brand of premium duck products called Royal Duck, which includes duck meat and liver pate, dried duck breast (Le Dame) and duck and goose fat (FATe).
”In 2020, through investments, we planned regular investments in the vehicle fleet, a regular overhaul of production capacities, preparation for obtaining an IFS certificate at our slaughterhouse, a packaging plant, a cutting plant and meat processing facilities. An application for support through EU funds was also made, which would provide new modern equipment for packaging and declaring meat,” Juraj Orehovec revealed.
As much as 80 percent of the sales made are poultry (chickens). They successfully cooperate with the Metro retail chain and several smaller distributors.
“We have continuously invested in our production for 20 years, so we have the capacity to grow, slaughter and process about 1,500 tonnes of meat a year. In the last two years, we’ve been achieving organic growth of 5 to 10 percent,” explained Juraj Orehovec.
Their open-type poultry farm covers 100,000 square feet and includes canopies, water lagoons, and uninterrupted access to grazing and daylight for the animals. In order to achieve a complete production cycle, the poultry feed is made partly from farming from their fields and partly for them by farmers from the surrounding areas. The most common crops in the composition of the mixture are corn and soybeans.
Owner Juraj Orehovec explained that in this way, they can claim that more than 90 percent of poultry feed is of local origin, and in addition it is certified as GMO free.
The closed farms consist of several modern stables, each with a capacity of 20,000 chickens. The last significant investment in the business was intended to expand the capacity of the open farm through the construction of a space for the preparation of poultry mix and in the space for hot meat processing within the slaughterhouse and packaging plant.
”At the beginning of the coronavirus era, the demand for meat grew, but given that poultry fattening is a branch of industry that needs to be organised about half a year in advance, we simply couldn’t supply so much, there was an extraordinary level of demand. We worked at a level of capacity that was determined on the basis of the trends and that would be sufficient under normal circumstances, so we can’t say that our sales increased because it was not feasible to adapt to such unpredictable market disruption so quickly. Shortly after, the market situation stabilised and the supply of goods, for now, is functioning well. The tourist season partially failed through May and June, but July and the first half of August were at the level of last year,” said Orehovec
The totally free-range poultry are raised on their own, while when it comes to the indoor poultry, there is cooperation with other farms.
In addition, they process all of their poultry within their slaughterhouse and distribute it through their own logistics chain. Last year, they raised about 50,000 ducks and about 50,000 free-range roosters and chickens, while in the slaughterhouse they processed about 1,000 tonnes of meat.
Juraj Orehovec’s farm is very much appreciated in neighbouring Hungary…
“Most of our production is placed on the Croatian market through our own chain of butchers, trading houses and shops, as well as through private butchers. One of the export markets is Hungary where we place live chickens from indoor breeding in cooperation with a company that helps us organise breeding and production.
Our Croatian chickens are valued in Hungary for being GMO free. Negotiations on entering the German and Austrian markets are still ongoing for the products of the new Royal Duck line. In the near future, we’re planning for additional investments in our production capacities in the slaughterhouse, increasing the production capacity and maintaining the existing quality with the placement of new products on foreign markets.
As one of the goals, I can point out the positioning of the Royal Duck product line on European Union markets alongside the esteemed French and Spanish pates,” concluded the ambitious Juraj Orehovec.
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