Recently Artak Kamalyan, RA Deputy Minister of Economy rewarded Netherlands senior expert and volunteer Mr. Jan Vieermann with a Certificate of Appreciation of the RA Minister of Agriculture, for providing invaluable assistance to the dairy sector of Armenia.

Mr. Jan Vieermann has been managing the Northern branch of the Dutch “FrieslandCampina” dairy factory for over 40 years, which has an annual turnover of 11,6 billion Euros and is one of the largest producers in the world.

After retirement since 2006, Mr. Vieermann visited Armenia 9 times, with the project Netherlands Senior Experts (PUM) and provided advice to Armenian dairy producers. Among those were “Borisovka”, “Black Ox”, “Dustr Melania” and “Golden Goat”. Due to the visits and continuous consultation, some new assortments of Dutch and a range of other kinds of cheese were manufactured at local factories, as well as the product quality has been improved.

He also supported Armenian producers to visit Netherlands for experience exchange, due to which a number of dairy processing technologies have been invested in Armenia.