There are now 170 cold storage facilities for keeping fruit and vegetables in Moldova. Vasile Sarban, head of the Horticultural Products Service of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry, has told IPN that these facilities have a total storage capacity of 146,000 tonnes.
Vasile Sarban said that the period during which the fruit and vegetables keep depends on their quality. Apples can keep for more than six months, while plums for three months.
A large number of cold storage facilities are concentrated in Costesti village of Ialoveni district. There are 30 refrigerators there with a capacity of 50 to 1,000 tonnes.
Of the 170 cold storage facilities existing in the country, 85 were built and put into operation over the last few years, with the financial support of the state, through the Agriculture Subsidization Fund. In 2011-2014, through the PARE 1+1 project, 15 economic entities made investments of 10.8 million lei (2.7 million lei as a grant) in building cold storage facilities with a capacity of 10,000 tonnes.
Experts of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry recommend the farmers to keep the products and to sell them out of season, when the prices are higher. The owners of cold storage facilities say the producers spend by 1 leu per kilogram of products kept in the facilities, but gain afterward 4 lei per kilogram from the higher selling price.
