From media: www.agroklub.com
The new Green Life product line – organic and halal acceptable, suitable for gluten free and vegan diet, has been developed and produced in Rakitovica for the most demanding European market.
Green Life products are developed and manufactured in Rakitovica, a small Slavonian village near Donji Miholjac. From an agricultural environment and a long-standing business family tradition. They established a special company within Fami Group ten years ago to develop, research and innovate special products. With the vision of creating solutions that have a positive impact on the human organism. That is how Protect Pharma Ltd. was established, and her first man is Mladen Falamić, owner and CEO.
We wanted to develop products that are natural and desirable for the human organism. We are not talking about a common term of healthy food today, which is misused. Food is food, and we can only talk about health safety, quality standards and quality levels, notes Mladen.
Only organic production
There are numerous employees and associates engaged around the development, research, innovation, organization and production, including the entire Falamić family, 3 brothers – Mladen, Marko and Mario with their families and parents Mirko and Mirjana (5M).
Our first product was Gastrosan, which at that time received a health claim from the Ministry of Health and Social Care: “It calms stomach problems and strengthens and revitalizes the body”. By changing regulations and harmonizing ie entering Croatia into the EU, we found ourselves in the beginning because all such products ceased to be supported or lost the market status of dietary supplements with the issued health claim. At one time we produced Slavonian barley tea, and behind it starts extensive development and research on numerous cultures – cereals and oilseeds. A completely organic story of growing raw materials and processing into final products. Wholegrain flour with and without gluten. Describes Mladen development path of the company.
They own 45 hectares of their own land around Rakitovica, which is handled through the OPG Mario Falamić, on which one part is always used for development and research. Everything has been sown in organic certified production for years.
They export organic raw materials – soybean, wheat, spelt, buckwheat and hemp. Considering they have manufacturing and processing facilities, people, knowledge and technology, as well as a number of products behind, it followed to the export of the product, not just raw material. Everything is standardized, certified and meets the most demanding customer requirements, shows Falamić quality trademarks on a new product line:
There is organic gluten free buckwheat pasta, which is extremely difficult to achieve beacuse there is no tolerance on it. It must not contain gluten even in traces. It is also certified as an EU V-Label (vegan label) because it doesn’t contain anything of animal origin (eggs, fats or anything else).
Pasta, wholegrain flour and teas
Many products have been certified by the Halal standard: buckwheat pasta, spelt pasta, wheat pasta with hemp and wheat pasta with chokeberry (aronia). The raw materials are from 100% organic agriculture and the yield of Slavonian plains and valuable people.
We are the only in Europe who certified organic hemp tea by the Halal standard and declared that they have no narcotic properties during consumption. We developed a system of stability and product quality control for tea and other Green Life products where all the essence of healthy ingredients is kept through control and monitoring of seeds procurement, soil preparation and processing, agrotechnical activities, harvesting, drying, processing till final product production. We are particularly proud of this, because we have raised the level above the usual standards within the EU and showed that Croatia can set high standards. The next pasta that is about to launch on the market is the corn pasta that will be also gluten free.
We have about thirty products in preparation and development at the same level of quality, but I can not say more about it, because it is innovations in the food field and we keep it secret until we launch it. What I can say is that we are planning to expand our organic tea line so this year we will also have a camomile, lemon grass and aronia. Notes a young entrepreneur.
They produce wholegrain flour from organic raw material (spelt, buchwheat, corn and wheat). Wholegrain flour rich in fiber and minerals.
Green Life, harvested and made in Croatia
All of these products are part of their new line, marked as Green Life, with added note “harvested and made in Croatia”. Under this brand they entered on the market in the middle of last year and already have customers across Europe. He says that their previous experience in negotiations is positive: it is interesting that the Western European countries perception is very positive about our food quality in the Republic of Croatia. Thereby with what we offer as a company. I would say that we (Croatia) have a good image. These big markets appreciate organic raw materials from Croatia, and we wanted a step further. To create value through the end product that will then achieve greater value for the end user or consumer.
Green Life brand isrecognized as product and a representative of a large number of organicfarmers who are represented to large EU marketunder one label.
The market seeks constant quality and greater quantity
Market requires balanced and guaranteed quality with the right amount what small individual producers can not achieve. We are currently gathering 10 suppliers of raw materials that through Green Life are coming to the shelves of demanding retailers. Almost a whole range of organic pasta, flour and teas can be found today in dm – drogerie markt stores, 160 of them in Croatia.
According to Mladen, this co-operation already achives good results no matter what dates from the beginning of this year. They also have distributors in the HoReCa channel that distribute their teas. In coffee shops you can drink their organic hemp tea, which is also sold in the Netherlands. They negotiate with large customers from the UK, Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Hungary, and have plans for the wider market of the region. The whole 10-year journey leads to position that today they have a rounded production cycle, necessary resources and the quantities for larger markets. They will soon surely have to increase needs for raw materials.
Most likely we were be looking for cooperators for different raw materials soon, and ensure them the fair price.Of course only for organic products. Already today we are looking for more organic corn. Such producers can report immediately.
They also offer processing and packaging – from capsules to big bags
They have different equipment, and it’s interesting how many tools they made themselves because they were either out of the market or were too expensive. He shows us the hemp combine and continues:
We also do services of processing, separation of flower and leaf, seeds and hemp stems. For example, backwards for two years, we have processed 200 tons of dry mass of hemp tops.
We also offer the drying of chokeberry and various herbs and spices. In some cases, we did the packaging, and we really have the width from the capsule to the big bags. We have many years of experience in fields of product labels and selection of the most suitable packaging. In this domain we help our co-operators and partners to develop their products together.
In Slavonia (argicultural eastern part of Croatia) we dont’t have great chances to advance from conventional production, but organic production has a great potential. It is a factual situation that the trend of purchasing organic products has a strong growth in Western countries with higher standards, and we are also witnessing changes in Croatia in that segment of the market.
For everything we saw we can conclude that Falamić familiy prepare a significiant step forward, which is very important for this part of Slavonia.