15 farmers from Kozani will start the first Greek plantation for rose butter production. Gathering rose leafs started two weeks ago and will continue until the beginning of June. Every day from six until ten in the morning, the workers and the producers are going to the plantations, in order to gather the roses and to take them to be pressed out.

One of the gatherers of rose leafs is the New Democracy parliament member from Kozani Georgios Kasapidis, who preferred to move from the parliament bench to the plantation. The truth is that the idea to cultivate roses in Kozani was his – he called it “the rose revolution.”

A total of 80 decares of land has been planted near the Kozani village Voyo and each decare gives 200 kilos of rose leafs. So, it is expected that the production will reach 16 tons, from which the producers expect to press out about 3 tons of rose butter. Maybe the quantity does not seem much but the price per liter exceeds ?5 000!

“The job is very tiring. One experienced worker can gather 10 kilos of rose leafs for three hours,” said Kasapidis for Elefterios Tipos newspaper.

This year, the producers bought a machine for extracting rose butter, which allows them to produce on the spot. The first “tester” – just few grams, was produced in 2005 and sent to the Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis.

Scientists have already researched whether the quality of the butter will be competitive on the international market. The results enthused the producers, because it turned out that the rose butter has high quality and it is even better than the Bulgarian one, which is known all over the world as the best!