Trade: Carrefour Romania Launches Agricultural Cooperative
Carrefour Romania has launched the Varasti Agricultural Cooperative, the first of its kind founded by a retailer in the Balkan country, esmmagazine.com reports.
The project aims to bring Romanian farmers closer to consumers by offering a range of high quality products, thus contributing to the development of the agricultural sector and local communities.
The cooperative is located less than 30 kilometres from the capital Bucharest, in the municipality of Varasti, Giurgiu, and totaling 60 hectares (of which 15 hectares of greenhouses), and has an annual output of 5,000 tons of vegetables.
The Varasti Agricultural Cooperative has five founding members: Carrefour and four local producers. It gathers vegetables from 80 families from the Varasti area, which are then collected in a 300 square metre purpose built warehouse. From there, the vegetables and other products are transported to the central warehouse and then distributed to Carrefour stores.
In addition, Carrefour provides local producers with returnable plastic crates. In-store, the price tags on the shelves will be marked with the area of origin of the products.