LAND O'LAKES 

Agro-Business Marketing in Macedonia

Agro-business marketing activities in Macedonia is a project financed by the USAID - United States Agency for International Development and implemented by the American organization Land O'Lakes whose activities are focused on providing assistance and support for the Macedonian milk and meat industry in accomplishing fast development. It is planned to be accomplished through complex market-oriented strategy and establishing functional competitive market which prefers quality through obtaining higher prices for quality products.

The leading Land O'Lakes concept in Macedonia is the program "Macedonian Quality Mark" as a moving force in providing assistance for the Macedonian companies for increasing their market participation, increasing the sales and profitability. The National Association of Private Meat and Dairy Products Producers has in its possession the Quality Mark and it is their registered trade label. The members of the association can obtain the Quality mark through a transparent process of certification, which involves regular monitoring of the production quality, as well as tests in their independent laboratory.

The Quality Mark is a marketing concept with a strong communication component, which at the moment results in 85% recognition of the Quality Marked products by the consumers in Macedonia. Quality Marked products have gained the consumers trust, so now 84% of the consumers questioned prefer exactly these products.

The Quality Mark Program besides a marketing campaign, provides additional assistance for the meat and milk industry clients such as: market researches, planning and defining the marketing strategy, assistance in the further development of companies' businesses, assistance for the Private Producers Association's development as well as assistance for the production and the technology and continual development of higher quality standards.

Since September 2001, the Agro-business marketing program in Macedonia started implementing another activity - Initiative for sheep products market development in Macedonia, as part of a larger program: Program for ethnic harmony. This initiative is directed towards establishing new markets on national and international level.

The collateral objective of this activity is promoting ethnic harmony through increased business activity between ethnically mixed sheep raising and sheep products producers associations. These associations are the main mechanisms, which offer small producers competitive advantage in their production, marketing and legislation in this area. More specifically, the aims of this activity are: an increased export of lambs and cheese and increased profit for the producers.

The communication, which is developed as part of this activity consists of promoting program including a web site, a brochure and video presentation.

D.M.