MY FARM Korona Champignons (HUN)
In each edition of “Mushroom Business” we publish an interview with a grower. The emphasis here is on the farm and cultivation methods. This edition offers a portrait of Korona Mushrooms, based in Kerecsend, in Hungary. We spoke to Ger- gely, Racz, son of the founder and owner Jozsef Racz.
By John Peeters
The future grower “My father, Jozsef Racz, esta- blished Korona Mushrooms in around 1990. ‘Korona’ means ‘Crown’ in Hungarian. In fact, he had already started growing mushrooms in small cellars back in 1970. Korona is a true family- run company, employing 350 people. My brother Krisztian also works for the company, and that’s where my future career is too. My particular interest is the technical side - principally the buildings, machinery, climate systems and suchlike. I am currently studying building engineering at the Technical University of Budapest, and hope to graduate this college year. At present I am doing an internship at Fancom here in the Netherlands. Our company acts as an agent for Fancom in Hun- gary. My younger brother, Jozsef jr, is still at secondary school. My
father and the other managers at the company highly value main- taining good contacts with foreign businesses. We are very open in our dealings. Thanks to these contacts our company has made incredible progess in the past 20 years and we have become a major player on the market.”
Cultivation The Korona operation consists of several companies; a composting plant, a number of mushroom farms, a spawn plant and research laboratory, a canning facility and a casing soil unit with its own peat mine. The composting process has with five bunkers for phase I. GTL is currently renovating and modernising the plant to make it suitable for a completely indoor system. Once construc- tion is completed, there will be seven bunkers with a weekly capacity of up to 2500 of phase I compost. The machinery comes from Hoving and Traymaster. The compost is made using straw, horse manure, chicken manure and gypsum. Phases II and III currently use 16 tunnels of 40 metres by 4 metres for 200 tons of compost. Expansion is planned here with eight new tunnels. At the moment 200 tons of compost is still sold per week as phase II or spawnable compost, and 650 tons per week as phase III
From right to left: Andras Misz - manager of the compost yard in Hungary, Gergely Racz, Jozsef Racz - founder and director, Krisztian Racz - marketing and sales, Jozsef Racz Jr. - still at secondary school
or incubated compost. After the investment, this latter figure will rise to 1000 tons. The compost is sold in Hungary and Romania, and is, of course, used for produc- tion on Korona’s own farms. At 250 tons a week they are currently their own largest
customer.and after investment Korona will use 410 tons of home-made phase III compost, leaving approximately 600 tons open for sale to outside
customers.The spawn lab at Korona primarily produces for the company’s own compost, but the spawn is also marketed com- mercially. The K145 variety is the result of their own developments in the spawn lab. Korona has two production farms. A smaller-scale, older farm is in Györ, and the newer farm is situated close to the composting plant. Here the mushrooms are currently grown in 50 Irish style sheds on Dutch shelving with a total growing surface area of 30,000 square metres. Expansion is also well underway here with 29 new sheds being built which will take the total surface area post-completion to 50,000 square metres. The growing rooms are filled by a Christiaens head fil- ler, cased and levelled. Korona works to a five-week cropping regime. Cool down is done on day seven, after between 10 to 15 litres of water has been sprayed per square metre. Pro- duction in two flushes amounts to between 25 and 28 kg of fresh mushrooms per square metre. Of this, some 85% is sold on the fresh market, with 15% destined for the canning plant where it processed into cans or jars. 350 kilometres to the south west of the main site in Kerecsend, Korona owns a peat mine where peat is extracted for the com- pany’s own casing soil produc- tion. This peat is first transported to Kerecsend, where it is mixed with brown peat before use. The fresh mushrooms are sold on the domestic market and exported to Romania, Austria and Italy. The canned mushrooms are also exported to counties like Russia and Bulgaria.. ◗
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