Interesting Facts About the History of the Company
The foundation of HUNGAROTRADE® Ltd. happened in 1989 parallel with the change of regimes in Hungary. The company was officially registered on 1 January 1991.
Originally, the company's main profile was the traditional purchase of agricultural products.
Our initial aim was to select some of the possible products that we wanted to focus on to collect and to grow. Such were snails, cherries, sour-cherries, honey, elderberries, horse chestnuts.
For the sake of their acquisition we established purchasing sites first only in the area of ​​the former Dunaújváros district then in whole Fejér county. Later on in Tolna, Bács-Kiskun, Pest counties; but in the case of honey and horse chestnut, we also organized the purchase in Somogy, Zala, Nógrád, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén counties based on necessity.
By 1996 as a result of thoughtful development we had the largest purchaser network in the country. We had established permanent purchasing points in more than two hundred villages and towns, and dozens of locations we had carried out seasonal work.
First of all, we had to organize a massive basis for merchandising our products. In order to do that we made contracts with domestic processors and then, in parallel with the increase in volumes we organized the export of the products.
Soon, in the country our company distributed the largest quantities of snails, elderberries and horse chestnuts.
After the war, HUNGAROTRADE Ltd. was the first company to export honey and snails (!) to Japan; and we can add that we had a large part in making Hungarian honey a real fame in the Far East.We continued purchasing up until 2001 when small producers were put in such an impossible position that the commodity supply offered was no longer competitive neither in quantity nor in quality.
In the meanwhile we gave a try to other segments of business so besides trading goods we established an industrial branch, too.
Taking advantage of the telecommunications reforms of the early '90s, we began to manufacture our own custom-designed phone booth family.
Our booths, well ahead of the age, were equipped with double door closers, energy-efficient lighting in sync with public lighting, and a “TELEPHONE” sign illuminated around the vault. In addition to the solo and twin booths, we were the first in the country to produce cabins designed for quantity production and for disabled people. Our first factory was established in Szécsény, followed by Bagod and Dunavecse.
The newly established telephone companies but also MATÁV were happy to buy our booths because of their reliability, design and low cost.
Most of our telephone booths are in Tolna county, near Pécs - Komló, on the southern shore of Lake Balaton, in Zalaegerszeg and Nagykanizsa districts.As a common characteristics of our domestic "free competition", the Antall government had decided in a decree that in Hungary solely BHG (a company excluded from arms production) was to manufacture telephone booths.
The forced and rapid closing of our plants meant a serious loss, so we immediately searched for other business opportunities.As a first step we organized the export of leather goods manufactured in Hungary to the fast growing German market.
After a few years of experimentation and development we created our "Bio Candle". Having licensed them we started their production at our factory in Lajosmizse. Not only did we the manufacturing but the packiging and distribution, too.
Our bio-candles have been featured prominently in Hungarian pavilions at numerous world exhibitions and have been highly appreciated by international professional juries in addition to the general public. Evidence of these are the honours, medals and grand prizes that highlighted our candles from other thousands of products.
Our plastic processing - vacuum forming plant was opened in 2001 in Dunaújváros. Today, this activity is a major part of our turnover.
To meet our own transport needs we purchased new trucks in 2008. As a result, our transport capacity has outgrown our own needs. After obtaining the required licenses, we launched our Domestic and International Freight Division in January 2009. However, our plastic processing plant has developed at such a rate that from 2014 we were no longer able to take on external transport. Our entire vehicle fleet serves our own transport needs and in 2019 it was necessary to purchase new commercial vehicles.
Given that 95% of our revenue comes from export we have introduced the ISO 9001: 2008 (since 2018 9001: 2015) in 2013 to demonstrate the professional and financial reliability of our company and received the OPTEN A-s and Bisnode AAA certifications.
The year of 2014 was the next significant date in the field of expanding our business when metal processing was added to our main profile of plastic processing. After the acquisition of the most advanced and precise CNC machines, work began on the production of vacuum tools and parts. Today, our own engineers design our tools and trays, so we can undertake new projects in an unprecedentedly short time.
In order to introduce ourselves and explore competition our company regularly participates in foreign and domestic exhibitions and presentations.
We pay special attention to learn about the latest innovations. Therefore our colleagues are continuously participating on trainings and courses. Our goal is to create a strikingly efficient community on which we can rely on in the long run and to be able to face everyday challenges.
In 2018 we moved to a new site, so finally all of our plants, warehouses and office buildings are at the same location.

The name HUNGAROTRADE® and our company logo have been protected since 1996.