Poland is about to become another country that will pay licensing fees to Bulgaria for the right to produce Bulgarian yoghurt. This became clear during a meeting between the Executive Director of LB Bulgaricum Vladimir Rusev and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Mlekovita Dariusz Sapinski. It is the largest Polish dairy company, as well as the largest private company in the country’s food industry in general.
‘For 50 years, millions of Japanese have started their day with Bulgarian yoghurt, and this year we have launched a similar partnership with Mongolia,’ Vladimir Rusev emphasized. He explained that in recent months the market share of the state-owned dairy company in the country has also increased sharply, as their products are now available in over 100 stores. ‘In the past, dozens of countries have worked with Bulgaria to use our unique bacteria. Today we are motivated to bring back these traditions and we are glad that Poland is on its way to becoming another strategic partner of ours’, said the CEO of LB.
The company Mlekovita is interested in signing a licensing agreement under which they will produce yoghurt in their own plants using the Bulgarian bacteria ‘lactobacillus bulgaricus’ and ‘streptococcus thermophilus’. Experts from the research units of both companies discussed the quality characteristics of the ferments and the final product, as well as some technological details of the production process. The details of a future agreement are to be finalised and the Polish party will be invited to visit Bulgaria within a month for its official signing.
The meeting was also attended by H.E. Margarita Ganeva, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Bulgaria to the Republic of Poland and Yordan Draganchev, Head of the Office for Trade and Economic Affairs in Warsaw.
The results achieved in the last decade rank Mlekovita first among dairy groups in the Central and Eastern Europe with an annual turnover of around EUR 1.5 billion. The company processes 8 million litres of milk every day, supplied by 15,000 breeders in 22 of its own factories employing 5,000 people. The company has 34 logistics centres, one of which is the largest in Poland. To date, 147 company stores have been built and 35% of the products produced are exported to a total of 167 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas. Every month the Mlekovita supplies 60 million litres of milk, 8,000 tonnes of cheese, 6,000 tonnes of butter and 10,000 tonnes of milk powder to the domestic and foreign markets.