The following is an edited and condensed version of an article written by Xhevit Hysenaj—owner of the Xherdo Company in Skrapar, Albania—and published in the “Korrieri” Newspaper, February 3, 2005.

If Albania is to be competitive in the global market, it will be because of its geoclimatic characteristics, its natural resources, and its real potential for doing business in tourism, medicinal herbs, and livestock products. These industries can create jobs for thousands of families, especially in rural areas where poverty and unemployment is much higher than in the rest of our country.

But to be competitive these days in industries such as medicinal herbs, one must first get up to speed with state-of-the-art operations in target markets. This process requires reviewing current approaches to the new markets, developing and offering new, value-added processed products, supporting them by means of new marketing strategies, and harmonizing the processing to EU and U.S. standards. It also requires establishing direct buyer contacts, not only among local buyers but among international ones, which will only be possible if processing, labeling, packaging, certification, and other contemporary marketing methods are improved. The whole approach must be in line with a clear and aggressive strategy aimed at convincing potential purchasers of the advantages of Albanian herbs and spices, compared to those offered by other suppliers.

To foster such marketing approaches in Albanian firms, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has undertaken various initiatives through projects such as the Enterprise Development and Export Market Services (EDEM) project. For example, one EDEM initiative at the end of January took Albanian businesspeople in the medicinal and aromatic herbs cluster to train in Germany. Albanian herb exporters such as Kujtim Kekaj, Mehmet Guga, Myllym Pepa, Julian Fusha, Ylli Shehu, Orges Liperi, Ibrahim Myftaraj, and Vangjel Qirushi closely observed how our products were handled and saw the kind of machinery used to clean, package, and then re-export our products to international markets.

Thanks to the assistance and experience of group leader Andrea Massen—as well as EDEM project observer Elvira Bazina, a USAID specialist who has followed the project for three years—we gained valuable experience from this training course. In addition, we visited the “Fair of the Green Week” in Berlin, where we could exhibit our products at a stand set up by Albania’s Ministry of Agriculture, and we toured several companies that import Albanian products, as well as the factories producing machinery to clean and process medicinal herbs.


Lectures delivered at the USAID training offered us new ideas on markets, marketing methods, and how to penetrate alternative markets in such a way as to avoid dependency on the giant companies that tend to monopolize the herb industry. This enabled us to understand that Albania’s medicinal herb industry has the potential to increase its production by improving quality. With regard to quality, an important component—and one where we fall way behind—is biocertification, which directly affects credibility and demand in foreign markets. Accordingly, EDEM has paid attention to this area through training workshops and by conducting site inspections (from the remote areas of Malesia e Madhe to Saranda in the south) to check the work being done.

The trip to Germany also allowed us to visit the Museum of Spices in Hamburg, where aromatic herbs from Albania were being exhibited. One could not fail to notice that the imports to Germany—from various parts of the world—contained foreign bodies such as scissors, strings, stones, and even pieces of snake, which testify to a remarkable carelessness on the part of producers and packagers. In light of such samples, we must stress the need for businesspeople in our sector—in cooperation with the Forestry Department and Export Stimulating Agency and through the contacts established in Germany—to continue to work to advance the industry.

Already, however, the medicinal and aromatic herbs cluster—well-organized by EDEM—is taking shape and helping to demonstrate that after nearly 15 years of transition, no more time will be lost in challenging the idea that small and medium-sized companies cannot export because they lack the processing and exporting capabilities of the “giants.” Indeed, the Albanian medicinal herb cluster has already started to export “Made in Albania” products to the new markets in Europe and United States. And it can further develop this trend in the years to come.