Carlos Fernando Solorzano

VegyFrut at a glance

• Industry:Food Processing
• Company:VegyFrut
• Impact areas:Social, Environmental
• Consulting focus: Created financial projections to grow and expand the business

About VegyFrut

Vegyfrut S.A. began operations at the end of 2006, and now this small business is firmly positioned in the food service markets of both Panama and Nicaragua. VegyFrut produces high quality, fresh-cut fruits and vegetables that are locally sourced by mostly women-run cooperates. It provides technical know-how to enable local farmers to diversify their crops and improve the quality of their produce. VegyFrut processes much of the produce for the food service industry in Managua, Nicaragua.

Growth and Development

The initial Vegyfrut family was made up of three members. Now this family includes more than twenty members. The business benefits the families of these workers, as well as more than forty-five farmers and their families. Each and every one of these partners can now count on social benefits and a dynamic atmosphere for success.

Consulting Focus

Agora consultants helped Carlos Fernando make decisions on important details in his business plan and worked with him to create financial projections for the first few years of VegyFrut. They examined his estimated costs and raw material inputs to evaluate the cash flow. With this help from Agora, Carlos Fernando continued to move forward with the business and began making market contacts and establishing relationships with clients. Two years later, once the fresh-cut vegetable business was well established, Carlos Fernando returned to Agora to have a second MBA team help him analyze the feasibility of entering into a new line of products.

"Agora Partnerships helped us to identify our weak points before we entered the market and more importantly, turned those points into our strengths... Working with Agora allowed me to enter the market with the confidence to confront today’s extremely competitive environment in Nicaragua’s agro-processing industry. Agora put me in contact with key actors in the Nicaraguan business world, opening doors to potential suppliers and customers who would otherwise have been very difficult for me to meet on my own."