Baltic Champignons (legally Baltic Champs, UAB) is the largest company engaged in the mushroom business in the Baltics. The company is part of the AUGA group; in fact, the owner of Baltic Champs Juščius Kestutis initiated its creation. Baltic Champignons produces mushrooms, compost, and also casing for itself. AUGA group includes a mushroom business, fields where vegetables and grains are grown, cow and poultry businesses.
BALTIC CHAMPS offers phase three compost for mushrooms in bulk.
– We differ from other mushroom and compost producers in that we have a completely closed cycle. We produce everything ourselves from start to finish, – says UMDIS Arunas Radzevicius, CEO of Baltic Champignon. – We harvest straw, keep chickens, make compost, grow mushrooms. We have a circular economy cycle – which is sustainable and has no waste, everything is recycled. In addition to being used as fertilizer for fields, waste compost provides us with biogas for our tractors. Baltic Champignons uses only green energy. By 2030, we plan for the entire AUGA group to achieve CO2 emissions no higher than the European average – although we are engaged in the cow business, which from this point of view is the most polluting. We create new generation of food.
Baltic Champignons employs 550 people, and the entire AUGA group employs 1,200.
UMDIS agency visited Baltic Champignons and interviewed the CEO, Arunas Radzevicius.
– We now manage about 35 thousand square meters of our own mushroom cultivation area, and our partners – smaller mushroom farms – operate on another 15,000 square meters. These are 4 own farms and 3 partner ones.
In 2015, one of the farms began producing 50% purely organic mushrooms using ecological compost. We use specially selected straw grown in our agricultural fields. And specially prepared chicken manure from farms that do not engage in intensive farming.
When we started – we produced 10-15 tons of organic mushrooms per month. Now there are 150-170 tons of purely organic mushrooms, which accounts for 15-20% of the total production. Bio mushroom is our business card. The second business card is exotic. Shiitake, eringi, oyster mushroom. We are planning shimeji.
We sell 60% of mushrooms packed. 3 years ago our figure was 39%. COVID has had an impact. When the demand for packaging increases, a challenge arises to increase the quality of the mushroom. Our packaged mushrooms go almost entirely to Scandinavia. Of the remaining 40% – about a half, 20% is sent for conservation and processing, another half is sold in bulk – also Scandinavia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia.
A major client for mushroom processing is Bonduelle – it buys for American market and makes canned organic mushrooms. Probably, since 2016, this company has been our main client for bio mushroom. Now it buys less, because Poland has begun to produce ecology. But we also began to focus on the fresh market in ecological mushrooms, so sometimes for Bonduelle we even do not have enough mushrooms.
When we can’t sell all bio mushrooms as bio, we convert them to conventional mushrooms and sell them as regular ones. They are environmentally friendly, but the buyer and consumer do not even know about it. In our conditions, when we have our own agriculture, straw, chickens, it doesn’t cost as much to produce environmentally friendly mushrooms as when you buy everything from outside. Our cost of ecological mushrooms is less than 10% higher than that of conventional mushroom.
Selling organic mushrooms is also more expensive. It needs to be sold faster, it deteriorates faster. If an ordinary convection mushroom can be kept in the refrigerator for 5 days, an environmentally friendly one should go in 2-3 days. It’s not that stable.
Innovations in mushroom growing
– For two years now at Baltic Champignons we have been creating artificial intelligence (AI) for cultivation and climate control. By photographing every two hours, we record changes in the germination of spawn on the soil, forming a database. The AI collects parameters from LAB-EL computers. And then in the room that AI controls, it analyses germination in relation to the parameters and the database it has. The results of the analysis generate support for the grower. AI tells you when to increase or decrease the temperature, water mushrooms, or to go and adjust ventilation. Now AI gives advice. But our goal is to get it to work independently. When we finalize the system, we want to patent it.
Picking. We are working on artificial intelligence for selective picking together with Kaunas University of Technology. The project is partially financed by the EU. A scientist develops a program for a robot that chooses the mushrooms that need to be picked.
The robot is also being developed. We tried tentacles, but stopped on suction cups. A Canadian company, which took a step forward a little further than us, found us through a Dutch manufacturer. They explained us their developments and offered to work together – most likely this cooperation could be born, if not this year, then next year. To combine all the developments and create a good robot.
Work force
– There is a strong problem with the workforce. In addition to locals, we employ people from Central Asia – Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, former Soviet republics, and we are now looking for workers from Asia. From 300 pickers, about 70 are missing. We don’t like this – we want to think about how to grow mushrooms, and not look for people all over the world to pick them.
We are working to improve the situation. Baltic Champignons is located in Siauliai. We are the fourth largest region in Lithuania. We organize career days so that children can see that living here is convenient and pleasant. What’s different here than in the capital – you do not sit in traffic jams for half a day when you go to work. Here, 20 minutes – and you are already at the other end of the city, you can quickly solve all your problems. We say that this is a convenient city with a small population of 100,000 people. With an international airport and the largest military airport in the Baltic.
We invite schoolchildren to the farm; they can try to pick mushrooms straight from the shelf. We make presentations – the task of our company as representatives of the chamber of commerce is to show children what business is located near them, so that they connect their future with Siauliai, and do not go to big cities, to the capital. There has also been a large outflow to Western Europe over the last 20 years. And if students do not go somewhere to Europe, they go to capital Vilnius. Our goal is to reduce capital syndrome. So that more people return after studying. And people really began to return little by little.
GLOBALG.A.P. -GRASP
– Baltic Champignons have certificates. GLOBALG.A.P. goes without saying, when you go with him to the European supermarket chain, they say “everyone has it”!
Three years ago, we were the first in Lithuania to receive the GLOBALG.A.P. extension. GRASP is a certification of sustainable management, relationships between employers and employees. Even Lithuanian Lidl received this certificate later than us. Thanks to GRASP, we signed an agreement with the largest German network Edeka and will soon begin deliveries.
What does sustainable management mean in practice in the mushroom business? The pickers have no overtime work – at all. We don’t work 12 or 15 hours. Our normal working day, which is respected by law, is 8 hours. They leave at 16:00. If we cannot collect all mushrooms, we look for more people to catch up, or we make fewer loadings. And the pickers have strictly two days off in a week.
When we were making this transition in favour of an employee, it happened that mushrooms were thrown away along with the compost. Not picked. Everyone in the facility told us that we were strange and that we needed to collect them. But we wanted to show people that we change the way we work. We pay by the kilogram. But now in Lithuania, if you want to find a Lithuanian picker, no one will come if you say that they will work until that no mushrooms on the shelf. These are not people from the Philippines or Vietnam who come to earn money and their goal is to collect more kilograms.
Baltic Champignons made this change a year ago. We were right: people began to return to us. And you know – now we are working to change the consciousness of our employees and managers. The picking leaders who have been working for us for a long time said: why is this necessary? And the answer is – to make people come to work here and make them have a good time! Now our staff is beginning to understand this and agree.
BALTIC CHAMPS offers phase three compost for mushrooms in bulk.
More details by phone. +37069371997
