The Agri People of the Year Award, as the flagship of the Agrotrend Group, was established by Zoltán Mátrai, associate professor in 2014, with the intention of drawing the attention of the society to farmers, producers, service providers, young farmers and gardeners who selflessly support their environment, their social engagement is enormous, they do a great deal for the public apart from their outstanding work.
In 2017, the candidates were searched in 10 categories. The winners of the categories were nominated by the jury after a long nomination procedure, in a secret vote. Mr. Árpád Mutsy, the owner and CEO of Bio-Fungi Kft., won the Horticulture category and won the most prestigious prize of the category winner, “The Agri People of the Year 2017”.
Árpád Mutsy had become acquainted with entrepreneurial thinking in his childhood, he spent his youth at Zenta in Serbia, where his grandparents and his parents were also farming, his father was a mushroom farmer. Bio-Fungi Kft was founded with their brother and his friend. The first 10 years were marked by the sluggish slow development, the establishment of markets, the development of a business strategy, the gathering of relevant expertise and the recruit of experts, coupled with the general Hungarian environment with the capital deficiencies of the time. The mushroom compost plant started an initially slow, but then dynamic development of the company since 2000, which provided an opportunity for a 10-15% growth every year. This trend continues until today.
In addition to the compost production, the company’s mushroom farm was built in 2008 in Ócsa, which is still the most modern mushroom plant in the country. At Ócsa currently there are 24 modern mushroom growing houses and 12 oyster mushroom tents. The company sells over 120 tons of fresh mushrooms per week in the leading supermarket chains in Hungary, Austria, Slovakia and Slovenia.
Bio-Fungi is a 100% Hungarian-owned medium-sized enterprise, employing 250 people, one of the most important employers in the region. The company’s revenue has been increasing steadily since 2003, reaching HUF 8 billion in 2017. 60% of them come from mushroom compost trade and 40% from mushroom cultivation.
The debut video made during the nomination of The Agri People of the Year Award:
Source, photo: agrotrend.hu
