If the lavender area is not reduced, the industry will agonize

The planting of large areas of lavender in Bulgaria has made the country a leader in lavender oil production. We produce more lavender oil than the world market needs, but prices have fallen and lavender oil production has become unprofitable, a BGNES reporter reports.

Atanas Atanasov, the manager of the company "Stark" - one of the first lavender producers in Dobrudja, told BGNES about the problems in the industry. They occurred in 2018, when there was a shortage of lavender oil.

"This deficit led to an extreme price increase. From there, a lot of people started growing lavender, which oversaturated the market. As a consequence of this glut, prices dropped. There was a double effect, in addition to the glut, there was also a reduction in the consumption of lavender oil because of the global economic crisis caused by the Kovid-19 pandemic," Atanasov explained.

The double effect is expressed in overproduction in Bulgaria and reduced consumption in the world, which led to the current crisis situation, characterized by extremely low prices in the range of 20-40 leva per kilo, making the production of lavender unprofitable.

Tanya Aptieva is an essential oil technologist with over 30 years of experience in the industry, having worked at the Rose Institute in Kazanlak and run three distilleries. According to her, the way out of the situation is to reduce the area under lavender. Until this happens the industry will suffer. Moreover, in northern Bulgaria one of the components determining the quality of lavender oil is lower, making it of lower quality than oil in southern Bulgaria. This should also influence the decision of farmers to reduce their acreage in northern Bulgaria so that regulation occurs, adds the technologist.

"Lavender plantations should stay with people in northern Bulgaria who are processors and have distilleries. All others should change this crop," Aptieva stressed.

Atanasov also hopes for regulation soon, but could not say exactly when it will come. "Bulgaria is a world leader in lavender production, but due to the extreme situations of 2018, many producers and consumers of lavender oil have taken it out of their production formulas. Accordingly, lavender consumption has dropped, but we now expect the reverse process," the producer said.

We are interested in how the state can help to overcome the crisis. The answer we get from both is similar - the state has abdicated.

"It gives neither advice nor recommendations, nor identifies the locations of the crops that would replace lavender in northern Bulgaria, and so people will fall into agony every year," warned Tanya Aptieva. She recommends that people who have not planted areas under a European programme should get rid of lavender.

According to Atanasov, the state has no will to help. "We can help ourselves by working properly. Being honest and open with our foreign partners. It is heard that there are a lot of returned batches of lavender oil, therefore the trust in the Bulgarian producer drops and it is very difficult to recover after that. We are working in the direction of being trusted and relied upon as a serious partner. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to gain trust and very easy to lose it in such a situation," he said.

To survive the crisis, lavender growers are closing the production loop.

"We select the right varieties, which we produce ourselves. Then we brew them in our distillery, control the production process, get to the final product and stand in front of the partners and say: we can guarantee what we offer you," Atanasov said, adding that this is the way to stabilise the industry, but it is a long and difficult process.

Tanya Aptieva believes that only people with programmes and factories to process the raw material should remain on the market. "This way the price regulation will come very quickly, in about 5 years," the expert is convinced. / BGNES