The project is worth HRK 1.74 million, of which 85% is money from the European Social Fund, while the national share of the funding is provided by the National Foundation for Civil Society Development. The project is being implemented in cooperation with the local action group (LAG) Vallis Colapis from Karlovac.
"This is a big step towards making the Finoteka.com search engine a system that is managed by the producers and buyers of domestic food," HR-Koncept director Hrvoje Kolman said.
Finoteka.com has become a social enterprise with the aim of reinvesting at least 75% of corporate profit in advertising domestic products and in the education and training of Croatian farmers.
Finoteka.com, which operates the food delivery website FinotekaDostava.com, has been active since 2008 and today around 3,000 producers sell their products, mostly fruit and vegetables, in Croatia as well as in Slovenia and Austria using this search engine.
Kolman said that the coronavirus pandemic had increased the online sale of farm produce, specifically by 50% for his company.
HR-Koncept plans, by implementing the project, to create conditions for domestic food producers to become co-owners of the central food market place in Croatia and to manage on their own the system for the sale of their products, offering only the select, best domestic products, and deliver them directly to end-users.
Kolman said that products were not stored but were delivered directly "from farm to table within 24 hours", with no need for intermediaries.
The project, to be implemented in three rural communities (Žumberak, Ribnik and Sveti Martin), will involve 120 people who have been unemployed for a long time.
This will help residents of rural communities use the untapped capacity for self-employment by joining in the activities of the new social enterprise, with the support of subsidies from the Rural Development Programme and the Operational programme for fisheries and sea, said Vallis Colllapis head Milan Medić.
Apart from helping producers, the Finoteka.com project will also help small and big retailers, buyers, restaurants, fruit shops and end-users find local food producers quickly.