Upper Austrian vegetable and fruit marketer efko is building a new facility with a logistics distribution center for fresh salad and vegetable products in Guntramsdorf, Lower Austria (Mödling district), through its wholly owned subsidiary Vitana. The site in Vienna-Liesing with 115 employees will be closed, the staff will be taken over as well, according to the press release. The groundbreaking ceremony took place on Wednesday, the commissioning will see a Corona-related delay until 2022, according to Die Presse.
Around 24 million euros will be invested in the new site on an area of almost 8,000 square meters. The company justified the postponement of construction and commissioning by one year by saying that there had been an adjustment to the planning processes due to Corona.
The groundbreaking ceremony took place on Wednesday morning, May 19. / Image: efko
Superb location
According to 
the release, the choice for locating in southern Vienna was influenced by numerous factors, such as proximity to high-yield fields and raw material suppliers, as well as transport connections. "The new plant is located at a central logistics point with optimal connections to the transport network. Combined with our flexible delivery strategy, this enables us to supply the entire Austrian market with fresh goods every day," said efko Managing Director Klaus Hraby.
"Our declared goal is to transfer the entire staff of the old plant to the new site, and for this we need, above all, good public transport connections," Vitana managing directors Manfred Rotheneder and Markus Pois said. The new plant will be able to process up to 10,000 tons of fruit and vegetables annually into fresh convenience products. Among other things, investments are being made in state-of-the-art sorting equipment.
Major supplier for convenience goods
The efko Frischfrucht und Delikatessen group of companies, headquartered in Eferding, employs 657 people and generated sales of 155.4 million euros in 2020. Its subsidiary Vitana Salat- und Frischeservice Ltd processes around 6,100 tons of fruit and vegetables annually. It produces fruit, salad and vegetable convenience products for food retailers and catering wholesalers. Sales of 23 million euros generated in 2019 were reduced in 2020 due to Corona-related reduced demands from the food service industry, according to the release.
For more information:
https://www.efko.at/en/welcome/
https://www.vitana.at/