Quality Proves Key to Mushrooming Success in BiH
In 2001, Milan Zoric and Boran Maglov had a dream to build a business exporting organic mushrooms of the highest quality. So, based upon their combined experience with finance and medicinal and aromatic plants, the two established their company—Mushroom—in the town of Celina.
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| Mushroom employee proudly shows off her firm’s product |
They were determined from the beginning to become an organically-certified processor of mushrooms, which they achieved through the Institute for Market Ecology (IMO) of Switzerland. To maintain this certification they must ensure that all their wild mushroom gatherers are trained as certified organic mushroom gatherers.
Due to their emphasis on high quality, by the end of 2003, Mushroom had received more orders than they could fill from Switzerland, Austria and Italy. As a result, they contacted USAID’s Linking Agriculture Markets and Producers (LAMP) project about potential assistance in increasing their capacity to fulfill their many orders. Specifically, they wanted help with their drying and cooling capacity.
LAMP gave Mushroom a grant that enabled the company to expand their premises and purchase a new dryer and cooling space in late 2004. (Mushrooms are often dried for ease of shipping and longer life.) These improvements enabled the company to increase sales from 13 tons of dried mushrooms in 2003 to 19 tons in 2004.
The company projects sales of 25-30 tons in 2005. This added processing capacity has resulted in an increase of full time workers from 3 to 4, part time workers from 50 to 60 and gatherers from 300 to 400.
Among their mushroom gathers are Mr. Nihad Hodzic and his mother, who are from Bihac. They are well trained, hardworking gatherers who receive a significant portion of their income from Mushroom. As a result of their exemplary work, Mushroom awarded them a small drier to reduce their transportation costs and thus enabled them to add value right at the collection point.
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