History

Alfa Bio was established in 1991. In former Czechoslovakia we were the first ones to produce Tofu, which had been unknown until then. The reason why the company founder Jan Lunter decided to devote his life to healthy diet, not programming, was merely personal. Thanks to a healthy diet his mother successfully won her fight with cancer and he wanted to further pass this good experience of their family with a “green table”.

Healthy diet cured a family

 “When my mom got sick, I started looking for a way to help her. My friends advised me to change her diet.” – Jan Lunter is remembering the events from thirty years ago. His mother started eating raw food and fruit juices and with her the whole family switched to a healthier diet. Back in 1980s there was not much information about alternative foods available. “I looked for information everywhere; I started from the very beginning. Finally I came across a recipe for Tofu.” – says Jan Lunter. When he cooked his first Tofu for his family, he would never have guessed that in a few years he would cook a ton of soy cheese every day.

It was weird not to eat meat

After he saw that due to healthy food, his family is thriving, Jan Lunter started to think about passing on what he has learned through personal experience. “My wife and I were extremely proud that we stopped eating meat, but the reaction of our environment was different. Doctors told us that our children wouldn’t grow and their brains would not develop. Fortunately, there were people who supported us. My big thanks goes to Dr.  Mika who remarked on our change with the words: “Those people are risking their lives whose tables are bending under too much animal-based food.”. This is how our director remembers the times of big prejudice against alternative food which he, as a vegetarian, had to face. After the revolution his colleagues – software engineers – and himself, founded a software company. However, the idea of healthy dieting was always on his mind.

Tofu was born in a cellar

Finally Mr. Lunter managed to convince his former colleague to try out this new and unusual business. The company Alfa Bio was established in 1991 in a cellar of a family house. “Our first machines were quite primitive; for example our press operated thanks to one kilogram weights attached to it by a climbing rope and an old steam-producing stabilizer we got from a hospital – Jan Lunter talks about the beginnings of the company. First of all people didn’t know what to expect from this unknown food, so the company Alfa Bio served as a wholesaler to various healthy products and Tofu presented only a small portion of the whole assortment. Very soon people’s interest in it increased and we produced one ton of Tofu in a week.

Foreign successes helped development in Slovakia

 Although Tofu was gaining more and more popularity, development of the company in the Slovak market was held back by a big obstacle – distrust for the unknown. Therefore an important moment for us was when we gained our permanent customers, e.g. the French company CountryLife, which delivered healthy food to the Czech Republic. At that moment we could fully concentrate on production of Tofu. When we got to a point that we produced o ton of Tofu in a day, it was obvious that we needed to move out from the family house cellar. We found a location and built our premises in an industrial park at the edge of Banska Bystrica.

Modest temporary conditions of the cellar were replaced by a professional production hall where approximately seventy employees find their job these days. Besides the production itself, we also have a healthy food shop and a CNG filling station on our premises. All our cars run on natural gas. We don’t want to leave unnecessarily big ecological traces behind us; and the natural gas is much more ecological, as well as economical, substitution for gasoline. In our effort to offer people an option to eat healthy outside their households, we opened a vegetarian restaurant in close proximity to the center of Banska Bystrica.

We are constantly trying to increase the volumes of our production. In the first half of the year 2011 we produced approximately seventy tons of Tofu every month. Our products are exported to the Czech republic, Poland and Hungary. Besides Tofu we also produce soy milk, spreads and vegetarian substitutions to meat-based foods.