Agrarada, based in South-Western Poland, was founded on 15 December 1999 by two Dutch entrepreneurs: Maarten Uyterlinde and Johan Kruijthoff. The company's history began with a 6-month traineeship, as part of their study at the Dutch HAS Dronten Agricultural College, at Decopol: A farming an agricultural contracting company. This ended with the establishment of the company's own sales network for agricultural machinery. This was even before the end of the traineeship and their graduation. Arek Brzyski – the current partner – was the first employee of the company.
Used potato equipment
Decopol, owned by J.H. Dekker, dealt with the cultivation of 1,500 hectares of potatoes. A group of Dutch professionals supervised the supply product stream for the brand new McCain processing factory, in South-West Poland. Thanks to Decopol, Agrarada became the distributor for Grimme and Euro-dealer in 2000. Initially, Polish potato producers were poorly mechanised. Therefore, there appeared a huge demand for used machinery. The first used machines originated from the home area Hoeksche Waard. Every week, lorries full of machinery set off eastwards. It was quite a challenge to use up every available loading space.
From import to export
The sales of new Grimme-machinery was increasing. The portfolio was extended with Ferbo irrigation machinery, Holaras onion harvesting machinery, Vaia tipping trailers and more. Since 2008, Polish farmers have been able to get EU-subsidies for the purchase of agricultural machinery. Therefore, the professional cultivation of potatoes and vegetables in Poland has increased rapidly. This in turn gave rise to the development of the export of little-used Polish machinery outside Europe. Thanks to the erection of a new workshop and parts warehouse in 2014, the machines could be more carefully maintained. The warehouse has more than 9,000 spare parts in stock.
A unique online store
In 2017, Agrarada invested in a unique multilingual online parts store. The focus is on spare parts for machinery for potato and vegetable cultivation, from planters and drills, through to irrigation systems, trailers and harvesting technology. It offers a wide assortment of the most frequently used parts from many brands. Fast delivery throughout Europe is always ensured.
Destination Ukraine
Agrarada has been selling machinery in the Ukraine since 2000. This year, the company opened a branch there, which supplies both used and brand new machines to the Ukrainian market. More and more companies from Western Europe deal with Agrarada to supply them with both new and used equipment.
Involved customers
As a partner of Novifarm, a Dutch arable farming company, Johan possesses extensive professional experience. He notices that Polish farmers are very much interested in the latest farming news from the Netherlands. “The first thing Polish clients ask me about is how the crops in the Netherlands are looking and what the prices of the products are", says Johan. Arek has gained his sales and management experiences in Germany. Both entrepreneurs expect the Polish agricultural sector to further grow strongly during in the next years, making potato and vegetable cultivation even more professional and large-scale.
