According to Eurostat, most Moldovan honey is imported in bulk into the EU for less than 2.4 euros per kilo. But the market price for bottled, branded honey is 5.8 euros per kilo.
This represents 24 million euros of opportunity for Dulce Plai and the country’s 6,000 to 8,000 beekeepers.
Spread the wealth
In six years, the Dulce Plai apiary has grown from 30 bee families to 160, from one product to 25 – the newest being a cereal bar that Liza is stoked about.
The same honey that gets 5 euros per kilo in a small jar, she says, earns 10 euros per kilo when turned into a cereal bar.
Best of all, Liza is able to spread the wealth since she sources locally all the ingredients, such as walnuts and cereals – the two other green products for which Moldova has a competitive advantage, according to UNCTAD’s National Green Export Review of the country.
“We think it’s a product that can really help a lot of small producers,” she says. “And the cereal bar itself is a high nutritional product.
“It’s everything good.”
In April, Liza took part in an UNCTAD workshop that was part of the green export review process. There, she met walnut and cereal farmers and heard about their struggles, like the unfairly low prices set by export intermediaries.
“Because of the small quantity they sell they cannot negotiate the price,” she says.
In addition to offering them a better deal, Liza says she’s also able to buy what the exporters won’t take.
“For export, the nuts have to look nice. But in the cereal bar, we smash them,” she says.
The bar has been a big hit. And Liza wants to increase production but says she needs access to bigger markets to justify the investments in new equipment.
Helping her find those markets is also UNCTAD’s goal.
In addition to Moldova, UNCTAD has or is carrying out green export reviews for Angola, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Madagascar, Morocco, Oman, Senegal and Vanuatu.
The reviews took centre stage on 8 October at UNCTAD’s Green Export Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, which gathered representatives from the 10 countries to share success stories like Liza’s.