Cooperativa Tara Mea to invest EUR 6 mln in a sheep meat processing unit

Newsroom 19/11/2018 | 12:12

Tara Mea Cooperative is planning to set up a slaughterhouse and cutting room for sheep meat worth around EUR 6 million. The cooperative has signed a partnership with the three federations and 10 shepherds’ associations in Romania, gathering about 95 percent of the Romanian sheep meat production.

In fact, the cooperative has become the project coordinator for the Alege Oaia! Program, and it has been involved in the entire process of slaughtering, cutting, packaging and delivery to hypermarkets.

”Animal sacrifice is not a problem, but cutting is complicated. For example, in a slaughterhouse, you have orders of 200 animals per series, not 2,000. This means that the cutting room must be sanitized before the 200 sheep are trimmed, then disinfected again in order to resume the cutting of pigs. There are only two sheep slaughterhouses in Romania, but they only work for export,” says Florin Burculescu, president of Cooperativa Tara Mea.

The organization has therefore decided to invest EUR 6 million to build a slaughterhouse and a cutting plant with a capacity of 50 tonnes per day.

Cooperatia Tara Mea has developed as a unique business in Romania since 2015, when its partnership between the Cooperative and the German retailer Kaufland started. Today, under the umbrella of the Cooperative, there are approximately 800 farmers active in the cultivation of vegetables, dairy and pork, sheep and poultry processing.