Chaduna – Cooperative Company from Akhmeta Producing Herbal Tea

Founded in 2017, Chaduna cooperative company is located in the village of Argokhi, Akhmeta Municipality and currently, it employs 15 local women in the 30-70 age category.

The company members collect leaf and berry plants, make various mixes of them to produce various herbal tea products and fruit jams. They also collect rose leaves to dry them. Each pack of herbal tea costs GEL 6. At this stage, the cooperative company’s small production maintains social character, the company founder said.

“Our sales market is very small. Before the pandemic, we could sell our products to foreign tourists. We used to host visitors with lunch and tea. Furthermore, I have planted 1,000 seedlings of the Galika rose variety and then integrated this direction into the cooperative company. A mediator company exported approximately 80 kilograms of Rose Leaves to Germany for the production of ethereal oil, but in 2019, the exports rose leaves were no admitted to the EU market without du bio certificates, while only one company issues this certificate in Georgia and this service requires serious financial resources. As for prices, 1 kilogram costs EUR 25-30 on the international market, but we sold the product much cheaper because we did not have a due certificate.

Recently, we received a distiller in gift and now we can prepare ethereal oil. At this stage, we are picking up this technique”, Natia Mamagulishvili said. We hope many young people join our cooperative company and our financial incomes also grow, Natalia Mamagulishvili said.