POLAND
With its own processing plants, laboratories, and cold stores Abramczyk caters to most demands
Frozen products expert now eyes the fresh ďŹ sh market Abramczyk, a family-owned company, started its operations almost 30 years ago as a processor and trader of frozen seafood intended for the domestic and international markets.
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oday Abramczyk can boast well-recognised brands on the Polish market and a string of international retail chains as customers for its products. Despite these achievements the company is not standing still. New product lines are being implemented and to accommodate these developments it is expanding facilities and hiring new staff.
Last two years have seen rapid growth At its offices in Bydgoszcz, in the northern part of Poland, some employees are working in temporary arrangements as the new facilities are being built. Apologising for the cramped
conditions, Hanna JedryczkaMajchrzak, the export manager, says the new offices should be ready in spring 2018. The development at the company is hectic. In 2015 a new production plant was opened to process frozen fish. However, at about the same time, the company began to experience demand for fresh fish packaged in modified atmosphere. As a result, some of the space in the new plant was allocated for this product. According to Katarzyna Stepniewska, another export manager, demand for fresh fish was mounting and so the company decided to renovate its existing processing facility, a process that should be ready in the coming months. With this the company
Hanna Jedryczka-Majchrzak and Katarzyna Stepniewska, export managers
will be operating two production facilities, something that has never happened before, with one focused on frozen fish and seafood and the other on fresh. The move into fresh fish is expected to bring several opportunities,
including exports. As Ms Stepniewska explains if the fresh fish production concentrates, for example, on loins the remainder of the fish provides the raw material for various other items that can be frozen.
A family-run company has certain strengths
The new factory was built in 2015 and now the old one is being renovated so that the company will have two production units, a situation it has not experienced before.
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Fresh fish is a new direction for the company, which has concentrated on frozen fish for the last 20 years. So far, the main clients have been the retail chains, who dictate to a great extent the specifications of the product they need. They expect suppliers to be flexible, which, as Ms Jedryczka-Majchrzak points out, caters to the company’s strengths. As a family-run business we are more flexible than a big corporation, she says, responding quickly and taking &VSPl TI ).)A05,