Chestnut is my childhood love! I was about five or six years old when I first tasted chestnuts at my grandparents’ Zala County home during fall harvest. At the age of eight, during such harvest-time, I dug up a few chestnut saplings, which I grew myself from seeds, and planted them at my parents’ house in Gödöllő.

After graduating with a B.Sc. in Mathematics from the School of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Technology and Economics in Budapest, I won a three-year scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The theoretical and laboratory experience I gained during those three years proved to be invaluable.

At my in-laws’ in Somogy County, it was a tradition to prepare home-made chestnut puree in the fall. After boiling three to four kilograms of chestnuts, four or five family members sat around the pot and began the quite labor-intensive work of cutting the chestnuts in half and scraping out the flesh from underneath the hull. The hands of this future chestnut-producer used to start cramping within fifteen minutes, leading him to incessant brainstorming sessions about how the time-consuming process of chestnut-puree making could be mechanized. My first machine - created only for family-use - turned out to be so efficient that, after some additional encouragement from friends, I started a business, ending up with 64 tons of chestnut mass during the following production campaign in October.
Our business consumes most of our family’s time. Fortunately, all four of our kids love chestnuts, and thus, are quite understanding of our commitment to chestnut-puree production!