More than 6000 farmers and agribusinesses in Albania so far have benefited from the “Albania Agribusiness & Tourism Support Facility”, a financing framework developed by EBRD in cooperation with and support from the Government of Albania, which started its activity in 2016.
The “AATSF Champions” are selected agribusinesses, which received technical and financial support under AATSF that enabled them to increase their productivity, resource efficiency or value addition. Hence, they can serve as representative best practice examples of how AATSF contributes to sustainable economic development of the Albanian agricultural sector.
“Flori sh.p.k”, a milk producer located in Lezha, benefited from the financial assistance through AATSF and the IPARD scheme between 2016 and 2020. The agribusiness started its activity in 2011, with a total number of 130 cows. Now in its 10th year of operations, the number of cows and heifers has grown to 393 and own production of high-quality food takes place on 11.6 hectares of land. The highly productive German milk cows today has led to an overall production increase of more than 150%.
Mr. Ndoc Gazulli, the zootechnician responsible for the farm management and quality assurance says that he got acquainted with AATSF and IPARD through AATSF’s Partner Financial Institutions.
“Through the AATSF and the IPARD grant support, we managed to expand the production capacity and bought new agricultural machinery and equipment needed to accelerate the process of production” – said Mr. Gazulli.
AATSF and the Agricultural and Rural Development Agency (ARDA) have support “Flori sh.p.k” through financial and technical assistance to expand its production capacities and to provide better quality service for its customers. Through AATSF alone, the agribusiness was enabled to access loans amounting to more than 400,000€ and to become one of the biggest milk distributors in Albania.