Bulgaria Newsflash Week 22, 2022

Dutch-Bulgarian company offers green solution to used cooking oil

A Gabrovo-based family business is the sole company in Bulgaria engaged in processing used cooking oil into biofuel. An article in the 24 Chassa daily reported that the company of Mariana and Patrick Kaiser, who are Dutch, has been doing that for 11 years.  UCO Bulgaria collects some 5,000 tonnes of used cooking oil a year from about 6,000 clients – from street vendors to large fast food chains and supermarkets, hotels and even industrial enterprises – which is then processed and transported to biodiesel plants in Europe.

The company  provides its transport with its own pool of electric vehicles, a project it calls Driving the Electric Future. The entire operation is designed to be environment-friendly, including by the use of renewable energy sources and waste water treatment.

Ukraine chooses Bulgaria for its production of agriculture drones

Europe’s only producer of drones specialized for use in agriculture, is now based in Bulgaria. Before that it was in Kyiv but following talks with Polish, Romanian and Bulgarian partners the owners chose the offer of Borislav Petkov, the company’s official representative for Bulgaria, who convinced them that Bulgaria is the place to grow their business. He had one condition that the owner accepted: that they be made under a Bulgarian brand, reports Balgarski Fermer weekly. The factory is now in the industrial zone of the southern city of Plovdiv, which has long traditions in production for the aviation industry. A large part of the Ukrainian specialists and workers have relocated to Plovdiv together with their families. Ten more people are yet to come. Bulgarian staff will also be hired. Agrocopter Europe makes electric and fuel-powered drones that are entirely designed for agriculture and can be used across the sector: orchard, vineyard and grain growing. The drones are used for precision application of plant protection products regardless of the size of the plant, the stage of development and the accessibility of the field. Some models can be used for dispersing trichograma wasps used in plant protection, or for a number of other procedures for hi-tech agriculture. Very soon the company will put out a new product: a 60-l drone for spreading seeds with a sprinkler.

Wheat price up by 68% in a year, maize by 55%, sunflower by close to 63%

Bulgaria is concerned by the persistent upward trend in key agricultural products and foods in recent months, under the pressure of rising production costs, Deputy Agriculture Minister Momchil Nekov said in his remarks at the latest meeting of the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council, Agrozona reported. “Fetilizer prices have done up three to four times from last year. National statistics shows that milling wheat has appreciated by close to 68% from last year, maize for feed by 55% and sunflower by nearly 63%. Production in animal husbandry has been contracting for a while now and the value added is falling steadily. The inflationary processes that have been on in the past months and the market disturbances caused by the Ukraine war cause concern both about whether Bulgarian consumers will have access to foodstuffs at affordable prices and about how agricultural producers will fare,” said the Deputy Minister.

Bulgarian lab Aspires to EU largest Bio crop protection centre statusa

The only Bulgarian lab for industrial bioagent trichogramma production in the village of north-central Doyransti village, near Lovech, had the ambition to become the largest bio crop protection centre in the EU. Actually, it has been in operation less than a year in a sector where Bulgaria was once a leader. Before 1990 the country had six such labs, among the top producers of bio agents, the Manager of the Organic Invest Bio Protection OOD lab, Borislav Boychinov, told a news conference at the BTA Regional Press Club in Lovech.

There are 19 trichogramma species in Bulgaria, albeit not concentrated in one place. The laboratory in Doyrantsi engages in the industrial production of a major biological control agent of plant pests, trichogramma, commonly employed throughout the world.  Trichogramma is a genus of minute polyphagous wasps that are endoparasitoids of insect eggs.