Local processing with high standards of sustainability: Funky Forest in Szécsény/Hungary

Házikó’s new flagship project is the Funky Forest factory in Szécsény, which took us to a completely new level: the pressed juices and smoothies produced mainly from the products of local farmers represent a more serious market volume. Funky Forest products don’t contain any sugar or additives, only pure fruit. The flavor pairings, which are sometimes surprising (apple-pear-spinach-cucumber), sometimes exotic (mango-butternut squash-ginger), bring a little twist into almost every product, distinguishing them from the offer of competitors. Naturalness, health and fitness are important to us, and these values are also reflected on the packaging and the whole brand image.

A community cold store – HáziCOOL - also belongs to the factory, which is a great example of local economic development: a good opportunity for local farmers for sale and advancement. Local processing adds great value to the produced fruit and vegetables. Meanwhile, using the storage and refrigerating capacities enables our local partners to attain a more advantageous negotiating position and to have more predictable and plannable sales.

Agri Kulti participates in the URBACT project together as consortium partners with the city of Szécsény and six other European municipalities. Recognizing the advantages of European-level cooperation, Szécsény and its agglomeration joined the Food Corridors subproject of URBACT in 2019 as the sole model-region from Hungary. The main goal of Food Corridors is to facilitate in an organic way the connections between the often-peripheral countryside and city subsystems, and the popularization of sustainable food production amongst more and more farmers. All this is combined with shaping the attitudes of consumers, with a specific focus on the increase of consumer dedication to local, small-scale, high-quality and seasonal ingredients, coming directly from the farmer, and bringing together supply and demand.

As part of the URBACT project, a detailed resource-inventory was created about the city of Szécsény and its agglomeration in 2019. An important pillar and economic entity of this is the local fruit-processing and pressed juice-producing factory of Házikó Farm Kft. The URBACT project partners could personally meet the most important agro-economic operators of the Szécsény region during the 2019 Hungarian field visit. The leadership of both the factory and the cold storage are members of the ULG group, meaning that with their valuable knowledge and social commitment they can contribute to the long-term development of the micro-region.

In the last decade, the multinational supermarket chains operating in Hungary place an ever-greater emphasis on integrating local products into their supply in the name of sustainability and environmental consciousness. Hungarian ingredients and high-quality processed products are available in more and more commercial units.

The SPAR/INTERSPAR chain together with the TV channel RTL KLUB called a grand-scale competition of Hungarian local products as part of their social attitude-forming program. The competition was open to innovative and sustainable products. The review committee, which consisted of acknowledged businesspeople, gave our team the special award of Hungarycool by SPAR product competition as a recognition of the FUNKY FOREST vision and concept. Now we have the honor of enriching the supply of INTERSPAR stores with our products since the end of April 2020. Through this, our products contribute to the reputation of Nógrád county and the Szécsény micro-region.

This means that the rural development principles of Agri Kulti can prevail on an ever-broader market; enclosed in a bottle they reach more and more people, and they provide more and more sustainably operating food producers with a stable partnership.