♦ Last year, the company processed 160 tons of fruits and vegetables for its own products, while it annually processes 100-200 tons for other customers.
The producer of natural fruit and vegetable juices Fresco Jugo is building a new factory in Iași County to increase its production capacity and reach national distribution, explained Eduard Prodan, co-founder, Fresco Jugo, in the ZF Investiți în România! , made in partnership with CEC Bank.
“In the first phase, we invest somewhere around 70,000 euros to be able to move with all the flow we need, we already have the land. And in the future, we would like to set up a factory store, with a playground for children of all ages”.
If the investment for land and building is made from own funds, for the new machines Fresco Jugo wants to attract 150,000 euros from European funds. If it does not attract the funds, the producer also looks for bank financing. “I also tried some discussions at the bank for credit financing for investments. We did our calculations and it would make sense even with the interest on a loan, but we prefer European funds because they are non-refundable”.
The company has a maximum production capacity of 1,500 bottles per day and today sells more than 1,000 bottles per day. The new factory would bring a capacity of 4,000-5,000 bottles per day, necessary to expand sales and distribution beyond the Moldova region.
“We entered Auchan only on Auchan Iasi, we sold for a period of approximately three months and the discussion with them was to enter all the stores in Romania. This means a very large volume of sales and the space in which we are currently operating does not allow us. And we first said to move to a new space, with a much larger warehouse, so that we can produce so that we can give much larger quantities”.
Today, Fresco Jugo produces in a factory in Letcani, Iasi county, which he established with his brothers in 2018 through a Start-Up Nation funding of 44,000 euros. The building for the new factory should be completed by the end of 2024, at which point the manufacturer will move the machinery it already has there and waive the rent it pays today for the first factory building.
The first project aimed at a processing capacity for fruits and vegetables that addressed the needs of fruit producers in the area, but after the first season the founders decided to launch their own series of products.
“We started with fruit processing for individuals and companies that had fruit so they wouldn’t throw it away. They wanted to capitalize somehow because the apple doesn’t last very long, but the juice has a 12-month guarantee and they wanted to capitalize on them. After the first season, we thought of putting a juice on the market with our recipes, our own brand, to distribute through stores. We thought about the b2b business, we are more addressing resellers, not individuals”.
Fresco Jugo has processed between 80 and 220 tons annually from 2018 until today for customers who wanted to capitalize on the products. For its own products, Fresco Jugo processed around 160 tons of fruits and vegetables in 2023.
“We produce juices more from fruits and less from vegetables. The most sought after and the first one I started with is simple apple juice. All our juices contain only cold pressed fruit, no additives, no water, no sugar. Today we produce 8 different types of juice, most of them in combination with apple, we also have natural lemonade sweetened with honey and orange juice”.
The products are sold mainly in the Moldova area, Iasi, Suceava, Botoşani, Bacău, Neamţ, with occasional orders in Timisoara, Constanta, Bucharest. The main sales channels are restaurants, grocers, cafes.
Fresco Jugo’s turnover amounted to 620,000 lei in 2023, and the target for 2024 is 1 million lei. The company works with 6 employees. Eduard Prodan and his brothers also have a company that performs construction works that obtained business of 2.5 million lei in 2023.
