How we operate

We define sustainability as maintaining balance between our financial success and the welfare of our employees, community and the environment. Thus, our efforts towards sustainability are focused on three major directions: environmental, social and economic sustainability.

Sustainability

Serving global consumer, we naturally have an impact on the environment – we use land, water, energy, packaging, tools, machinery and buildings for growing, producing, selling and delivering our products. Each department of the company regularly audits its activities aiming to reduce the need of inputs (area, natural resources, ingredients, energy, etc.), avoid pollution and reduce or eliminate any other negative impact on the environment.

Our growing method (tunnels, individual watering and feeding of each plant) is the most efficient and protecting environment, because we can achieve up to 10 times bigger harvest using the same area of land comparing with conventional farming, which correspondingly reduces the need of water and energy.

Our other measures to increase environmental sustainability include secondary use of excess water used for other plants, usage of “good bugs” to avoid insecticides and purchase of electricity produced from renewable sources.

There are many theories related to the global carbon emissions and we are not the judges to decide if reducing carbon in the environment is much better than emitting it. We seek to be a “carbon neutral” company offsetting the carbon we emit directly or indirectly with activities and solutions which do not emit carbon or reduce the amount of carbon in the environment.

We are building a socially responsible company with established culture of creativity, self-expression and cooperation. We aim to have comfortable working environment (affected by weather conditions as little as possible) and fair salaries, motivating to work hard but with a smile. We support natural equality (gender, nationality, orientation, etc.) where everyone has the right to get the position or salary based on professionalism and results, not based on political correctness or corporate fashion trends. Respect and appreciation of each team member, from the cleaner to the head of department, is practiced across the company. We double check how successful we are in this area with Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit (SMETA). We are one of the largest employers in the region where we grow and produce our fine products and we feel that we earned the reputation of fair employer caring both for the employees and the surrounding environment.

With respect to the economic sustainability, we practice principles of transparency internally in the company and with external stakeholders. Having a flat and young organization we can share management information within the company swiftly and react rapidly. We pay official and fair salaries as well as taxes, therefore, our employees feel secure while the tax authorities are treated as our partners. We do not tolerate corruption and avoid relationships with buyers or suppliers which have doubtful reputation.

A team of employees from all levels and areas across the company has prepared and is continuously updating the Sustainability Strategy of the company, which defines overall understanding of the need for sustainability, areas for improvement, sustainability targets and actions to achieve them within agreed timeline.

Operational Excellence

There are two sources of our impeccable operational excellence: vertical integration and quality oriented corporate culture.

In order to produce the product of unrivaled quality, we learnt to grow the sweetest berries, so that “raw material” taken to drying is most ripe, best looking and contains no chemicals. Our quality control strictly monitors all berries reaching the freeze-dryers and performs regular laboratory tests.

Our production facilities match the requirements of the most demanding clients in the world: food grade production facilities are impeccably clean, while state-of-the-art equipment allows us to produce exceptional and stable quality snacks. Full traceability from the seedling in the fields to the produced pack in our warehouse is ensured by our sophisticated information management systems.

Full vertical integration was and will be our strategic objective as it allows us to be way ahead of any our competitor in terms of quality, and to provide the tastiest healthy snacks to our customers.

Drive for quality is embedded in our corporate culture. Field workers, production employees, the managers – everyone understands and appreciates “the philosophy of quality” and the procedures of the company that enable us to maintain order and high standards.

We aim to be better than anyone in the world in our product category, therefore, we spend extra time and effort to learn what is the market standard and how to beat it.

Our team

Our team is young and energetic. We became one of the best growers and freeze-dryers in the world due to full dedication, countless hours of extra work in the evenings and weekends, and ever-burning enthusiasm.

Now our team is focusing on new products, new plant varieties, new operating processes in order to become maybe not the biggest, but the best healthy snack company in the world.

The corporate structure of the firm is flat – we don’t like hierarchies, we like direct and fast communication among all team members. The heads of departments have lots of authority to make own decisions, therefore, there is great sense of independence and responsibility at the same time.

We expect that our employees work in our company first of all because they love what they do and they get paid for that activity a fair and attractive salary.

Corporate structure

The Board

Peter Gage Morris Tomas Šidlauskas Evaldas Čepulis Saulius Buteliauskas Adomas Žadeika

Vykintas Misiūnas
CEO

Internal Auditor

Quality Controler

Finance Department

Technical Department

Growing Department

Growing Prevention & Feeding

Production Department

Production Laboratory & Technology

Commerce Department

Commerce Logistics Marketing (outsourced)

Personnel

Legal Services (outsourced)

IT Services (outsourced)