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In March 2014, a chance business meeting led to a long drive within Romania. The landscape of blooming fields in the spring season was a sight to behold. The founders asked about the various crops that grow… barley, wheat, sunflower and corn fields on the both sides of the road as far as the eye could see. This vision was not lost on the founders who repeated the trip on several occasions and in different seasons, only to fall in love with the country, its culture and habits.

In 2017, the founders bought 90,000 square meters of agricultural land and with the help of local farmers started growing corn, wheat and sunflower on a 3-year cycle. This cycle is necessary in order to maintain the fertility of the soil. Today we grow the equivalent of more than 50 tons of wheat per annum. We have set our targets to reach 500 tons in the next 5 years, hence our target is to reach a one million square meter of agricultural lands. We employee a very strong set of criteria when purchasing agricultural lands and one of the most important criterion is that the land is accessed from asphalted roads. This makes our lands more attractive and their value increase much faster due to their accessibility.

3D Drawings

2nd Anais Café

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2nd Anais Café

At the other end of the food spectrum, the group founders hatched out a well thought of store-concept. The stores/café will process (in a limited way) organic products, mostly related to the vegan sector. For this to be necessary, the group bought its first real estate property, a 125 square meter commercial space in the seaside city of Constanta. Constanta is one of the oldest cities in Romania with large excavations of old Roman archeological town having been present for at least 2000 years. It also stands as a testament to the religious tolerance within Romania with beautiful mosques and minarets that dot around the city from the time of Ottomans. The commercial space the founders bought is the headquarters for Azara Healthy Foods SRL (“Azara”). It will also be the second ‘Anais Café’ to be set up globally.

Azara Healthy Foods

Azara is primarily interested in investing in food companies with local Romanian families, as minority shareholders. For this, we are pursuing several investment opportunities within the jam manufacturing and honey production and processing as well as other organic food products. The target for 2019 is the completion of Anais Café in Constanta, and the purchase of at least two food manufacturing companies. In the short run we have set our target to investing as minority shareholder in 5-10 companies within the next 5 years. We will slowly and surely start using the ‘economies of scale’ model in which ingredients, packing items (such as glass jars) between these Romanian companies will be coordinated in order to obtain the best possible prices.