It started as an experiment, sending some samples of essential oil from Albania to the United States in 2010. The success was immediate: these first samples were quickly followed by building an essential oil distillery in Tirana in 2011. Fast-forward to 2018 and MEIA are putting the final touches to another distillery in the Malësi e Madhe district, after having grown their supplier base in Tirana and Saranda.
This is the story of Emiland Skora, owner of Mediterranean Export – Imports Albania, MEIA Ltd that distills and exports Albanian essential oils from Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (MAPs) into American, European and Australian markets. As he explains, “we started in 2011 with our first contract and now in 2018 we have obtained 10-year contracts for exporting essential oil in America, Canada, Australia and some European countries. This was possible thanks to the cooperation with Risi, who trusted us and helped to expand our processing capacities during the first years of the activity”.
Emiland explains that MEIA has agreements with Albanian farmers by renting and buying the necessary land. His goal is to become the only distiller in Albania that has 100% control on its entire operations: when he succeeds, MEIA will become the largest organic farm in Albania and in the Balkans.
Valentin Sterkaj is 28 years old and works for the new distillery in Koplik. He is in charge of collecting MAPs from local farmers, and he also supplies MEIA from his own land. He has been working with MEIA for 3 years and appreciates the security MEIA has brought to the area: “having a long term guaranteed and contracted production, myself and farmers have registered our own businesses and we do all the transactions through Bank Accounts”.
MEIA owns two distilleries in Tirana and Koplik, 250 Hectares worth of land, and it rents from farmers in Tirana, Malësi e Madhe, Belsh, Librazhd, Lushnja and Saranda almost 300 Hectare planted mostly with Lavender Angustifolia, Helichrysum, Chamomile and Melissa.
What next? Besides entering new markets, Emiland reveals that his wife is now exploring the production of bio detergents with waste water from the distillation process. The saga continues.