Investments in organic farming paying off
- Delivery of 6,000 tons of organic grain and organic potatoes
- Organic sector defies the crisis
Hamburg, 23 February 2010 – This year’s BioFach fair, which was held in Nuremberg from 17 to 20 February, again paid off for KTG Agrar AG. At the leading event of the European organic sector, renowned organic food manufacturers ordered a total of 6,000 tons of organic grain and organic potatoes from the 2010/2011 harvest from the Hamburg-based agriculture company. This represents an increase by 1,000 tons over the previous year. “The consistent expansion of our organic farmland in recent years is now paying off,” says Siegfried Hofreiter, CEO of KTG Agrar AG. “Not only our existing customers ordered more than in the previous year; we were also able to convince new food producers of the high quality of our agricultural products.”
KTG Agrar has cultivated organic food on a large scale since 1992, which makes the company a pioneer in the industry. KTG Agrar specialises in food crops such as grain, maize and rapeseed; at present, 12,000 hectares are farmed to strict ecological standards. The company supplies customers in Western Europe, who demand large quantities of consistently high quality. KTG Agrar therefore invests not only in the expansion of its farmland but also in new technology such as modern silos and drying facilities. Siegfried Hofreiter: “Thanks to state-of-the art production and storage methods, we can guarantee the highest quality and product availability. This makes us stand out clearly from Eastern European and Asian competitors.“
In the past years, the sector’s growth was exclusively driven by imports from Eastern Europe and Asia, but now the trend is again towards local production and, hence, top quality. In 2009, the German organic sector reported a seven percent increase in sales revenues despite the crisis. KTG Agrar expects the growth in the organic sector to continue throughout Europe in the coming years. “We are far from having tapped all product groups,” says Siegfried Hofreiter. Organic meat and snacks, for instance, are not yet available in all food stores. “We will continue to expand our organic farmland going forward, as agricultural commodities are the limiting factor of our industry.”