Processing of agricultural products in PNS 2023–2027: the interventions are DR 22 and DR 23, while DR 30 is young farmer setup

The intervention's stated purpose is to strengthen market orientation and increase the competitiveness of farms, together with climate change mitigation and adaptation. Its operational objectives are the sustainable development, modernisation and retooling of the food industry and support for food chains and for collection and conditioning systems.

Beneficiaries come in two kinds. On one side, associative forms with an economic role: agricultural cooperatives and cooperative companies set up under national law, and producer groups and organisations recognised by the agriculture ministry. On the other, other economic operators — SMEs under Law no. 346/2004, large enterprises, and farmers who qualify as an SME or a large enterprise.

The rate of non-reimbursable public support is 65% of total eligible costs for SMEs, associative forms and other enterprises, and the value does not exceed EUR 3 million per project for modernisation investments, EUR 10 million for greenfield investments proposing at least processing for the fruit and vegetable, milling, oil and compound-feed sectors, and EUR 7 million for other greenfield investments. The difference between modernisation and greenfield moves the ceiling by millions, so it is settled at the start, not at the end.

DR 23 targets investments in processing agricultural products to obtain food products and transformed products other than those listed in Annex 1 to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The objectives are the sustainable development, modernisation and retooling of the food industry and a durable food sector. Beneficiaries: SMEs under Law no. 346/2004 and large enterprises.

Support is at most EUR 10 million per project for greenfield investments in the bakery sector and at most EUR 3 million per project for other investment types. The applicant guide for DR 23 published on the intervention page is dated 27 November 2025, and the intervention fact sheet, annex 6, is at version 8.0 of 28 November 2025 — a useful signal of how often the documentation is revised and why last year's summary does not replace an annex.

The two interventions are not chosen by preference: the dividing line is the resulting product, namely whether it appears in Annex 1 to the TFEU, and each intervention's annex of eligible activity domains is the document that settles it. That check belongs to the consultant and the guide, not to the software supplier.

DR 30 is called support for young farmer setup. Its purpose is to attract and support young and other new farmers and to facilitate business development in rural areas, and the non-reimbursable public support is EUR 70,000, granted over at most three years as a lump sum in two instalments: 75% on signing the financing contract and 25% subject to correct implementation of the business plan.

The economic-size thresholds are between EUR 12,000 and EUR 100,000 SO for ordinary holdings, between 8,000 and 100,000 SO in mountain areas and between 2,300 and 100,000 SO for vegetables in protected spaces. Beneficiaries are individuals registered and authorised under Emergency Ordinance no. 44/2008 — sole traders, individual and family enterprises — plus sole shareholders and administrators of limited liability companies, and majority shareholders and administrators of such companies.

In other words: a processor looking for money for a packing line has nothing to submit under DR 30, and a young farmer at setup has nothing to submit under DR 22. A code mix-up does not surface at evaluation; it surfaces earlier, in months of documentation drafted for nothing.

The first layer is the food production ERP: production orders based on recipes, automatic write-off of consumption, records of batches and yields. It answers the question every processor asks at month end — what each product leaving the gate actually costs, raw material, process losses and labour included.

The second layer is traceability: every batch of finished product keeps its link to the raw material batches used, to the process parameters and to the deliveries made. At a market withdrawal you isolate the affected batches in minutes instead of freezing a whole period's output. For units working with retailers or exporting, that capability is a listing condition.

In the dossier both layers appear as a technical offer broken down by functionality and as a budget by eligible cost category, aligned with the physical investment schedule — an ERP is not accepted before the line it runs exists. Indicatively, a bespoke management core sits in the EUR 10,000–15,000 band and a modular system started step by step in the EUR 15,000–60,000 band; the firm figure follows a review of the process flow.

We deliver the systems and their documents: specifications, technical offer, budget, supply contract, acceptance reports for payment claims. We do not draft the funding application, we do not produce the feasibility study, we do not decide whether a project belongs under DR 22 or DR 23 and we do not guarantee selection — evaluation belongs exclusively to AFIR.

The limit that costs us: we do not issue an offer we cannot honour at the budgeted value. In a processing project, where software acceptance depends on the line being commissioned, an optimistic offer turns into a delayed payment claim. We would rather say up front that integration with certain machines is only possible once we have read their technical sheets, even if that shortens the feature list in the offer.