Pusztadrog Ltd. Co. began its activity in 1992 as a legal successor of FITOENVIRON Ltd. Co. The company was founded by Jókai István and his wife. The professional and economic activity of the company is leaded by the owners.
The Pusztadrog Ltd. is dealing with processing herbs and spices (camomile flower, rosehip, elder flower and berry).
Mr. Jókai knows the herbs since he was a child, through his parents and grandparents. It was his main motive to begin this not customary activity (collecting and processing herbs).
The other cause, which inspirated Mr. Jókai too, was the beautiful and rich flora of his living-environs, where a lot of herbs still grow freely.
The base of Pusztadrog's production is the natural flora of Hortobágy. A part of these plants can be found in large colonies, others are spread so their collection needs hard work.
A lot of people from Balmazújváros and its region have been occupied with collecting herbs for ages. Pusztadrog Ltd. collects spices and herbs by itself and with the help of some contracted purchasers. It works not only in county Hajdú-Bihar but in 5 other counties, too.
The products of Pusztadrog ara purchased mainly by foreign companies through Hungarian intermediaries so the quality-requirements are high. Especially because the products made of herbs are qualified as bio-products, consequently they meet not only the Hungarian but international standards, too.
The company continuously enlarges its production capacity according to the market opportunities. This process had an outstanding stage in 1994 when they realised the mechanic development pertly with the non-refoundable grant of the State Develpment Institute (ÁFI). This investment had a remarkable role in efficiency improvement and the increase of processing grade and quality level.
This investment and some smaller ones were materialised in the first premisses, where the possibility for enlargement stopped mainly because of the size of the premisses. The lack of place is a problem in the production and storing, too.
Pusztadrog rented a property for warehousing in 1996 (Balmazújváros, Dózsa street 45.)
The company bought it in 1997 and bedun to build there a new herb-processing factory. The reason why they did so was that the company wanted to multiply its capacity. In spring, 1998 the new firm was ready to operate in the season to come.
The important data of the new two-storey building (the result of the investment):
26*7=182m2 basic area
total utilisable area including attic: 364 m2
The purpose of the building:
first floor: processing plant + dryer, social rooms
attic: store
With this approximately 30 million Ft worth investment, Pusztadrog established the material conditions of its development.
Although the recent activity of Pusztadrog can be qualified as flourishing and successful, the Ltd. is unbrokenly seeking for new market possibilities, develops its production means in the spirit of this conception the company has got two main goals in middle and log run: to increase the processing grade of its products and to obtain additional export markets.
Firstly, the firm wants to realise a smaller investment (cca. 2,5 million Ft) still in 1998.
This investment is to purchase a cosmetics-producer machine. With this new device cosmetics with herbs content can be produced and it can be sold under Pusztadrog's own brand-name.
Next year the firm is going to execute another big investment, one element of it is to buy a new tea-packing machine. Turnover (not only Hungary but abroad, too) and profit can be increased remarkably with this new machine.
More than 90% of the products get abroad through different Hungarian intermediaries. The highest turnover in 1997 and 1998 happened with MediPlant Ltd.
Direct export can result much than the recent income and on the other hand, Pusztadrog can get more accurate market information.
The fact that the vast majority of the products are qualified as bio-products raises the company's sales possibilities. The products have already got the bio-title in foreign countries, too, for example in Germany, England or the USA.
