The export volume of Chilean cherries to Russia at the beginning of February 2022 exceeded the volume exported in the previous season and reached 176 tonnes. Exports to the Russian market are planned to continue until the beginning of March, including holiday deliveries for St. Valentine’s Day. The marketing support program by the Chilean Cherry Committee was launched in the 2021/22 season in Russia for the first time.

During the marketing campaign in Russia, a webinar was held for participants of the Russian fruit market, advertising banners were installed on FoodCity, and negotiations were held with leading retailers. An SMM campaign was also launched with lifestyle influencers to draw attention to the product and boost sales.

Despite the logistical crisis caused by the pandemic and the decrease in purchasing power, fresh cherries in winter attract the attention of suppliers and are demanded by buyers. During the 2021/22 season, Chilean cherries were sold in Azbuka Vkusa, METRO C&C, VkusVill, Fruit Lavka supermarkets, at the central farmers’ markets in Moscow and St. Petersburg and in online stores.

“The first year of the promotion of cherries from Chile in Russia coincided with the difficult times of the pandemic, which significantly affected the logistics and speed of deliveries. Despite difficulties, the season was a success. This year, Chilean suppliers organized maritime deliveries of cherries to Russian retail,” comments Sharif Carvajal, Marketing Director for Europe, Asia and the Middle East of the Chilean Association of Fruit Exporters (ASOEX).

The main slogan of the advertising campaign was ​​”Enjoy a wonderful moment.” Cherries from Chile can be an unusual and healthy gift for winter holidays, such as New Year’s Eve, Christmas, or Valentine’s Day. For people leading a healthy lifestyle, cherries can replace candies or cakes on their weekly shopping list.

You can find a list of suppliers of Chilean cherries at comitedecerezas.cl.

Сообщение Winter cherries from Chile: the launch of an advertising campaign and growing deliveries to Russia появились сначала на EastFruit.

According to EastFruit analysts, the first shipment of frozen raspberries from Uzbekistan to the Russian market in August 2021 was successful. Therefore, several batches were exported at once in September.

In total, Uzbekistan has exported 83 tonnes of frozen raspberries to Russia in August-September. This is a relatively small volume, especially if you look at the export volume records noted in Ukraine recently. However, the very fact of Uzbekistan’s entry into a very profitable segment of the exports of frozen berries is very indicative. The main challenge for Uzbek producers of frozen berries and fruits in the near future will be the development of raw material sector. In our opinion, this can serve as an impetus for the development of growing a range of berry crops, such as raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and others.

Read also: Uzbekistan significantly increased exports of frozen vegetables and fruits – analysis of exports structure and potential

By the way, only seven countries exported frozen raspberries to the Russian market in August 2021. The largest volumes of frozen raspberries were supplied to Russia by Belarus, although, most likely, it was mainly the re-export of Polish and Ukrainian berries that cannot be supplied to Russia directly. Significantly smaller volumes of frozen raspberries in September 2021 were supplied to the Russian market by China and Serbia – about 200 tonnes each.

Considering the high prices for raspberries this year, we have already written that the areas planted with them in Uzbekistan continue to expand. And quite unexpectedly for market participants, Russia has become the second fastest growing market for frozen raspberries in the world.

Сообщение Uzbekistan is increasing the exports of frozen raspberries to Russia появились сначала на EastFruit.

Exports of early onions from Uzbekistan have been increasing at a very high rate in recent years. However, not everything in this business is so rosy, despite the fact that the government of Uzbekistan encourages vegetable producers (though not with financial incentives, but with regulations) to grow more winter onions.

According to EastFruit price monitoring data, wholesale prices for early onions in Uzbekistan are a source of concern – they are almost a third lower than last year’s and have a tendency to decline. In neighboring Tajikistan, last year’s onions are sold at 7 US cents per kg – twice as cheap as in Uzbekistan. In Russia, the stocks of 2020 harvest onions are still large, and the price is two and a half times lower than last year!

EastFruit experts figured out if there are any prospects of early onion exports from Uzbekistan, and what segments of the onion business are the most attractive for the country.

The exports of early onions from Uzbekistan has been growing by 24% or 21 thousand tons per year over the past five years, according to EastFruit estimates. Due to the fact that harvesting of early onions in Uzbekistan starts in April, when the stocks of last year’s harvest are decreasing in northern countries, a window of opportunity of about three months opens up for Uzbek onions exports.

Why three months? In Russia and Belarus, early onions become available on the market only at the end of June. Around the same time, stocks begin to deplete, and prices often rise quite rapidly.

It would seem that everything is going well – since exports are growing, there is a demand for early Uzbek onions, isn’t it? However, there are a number of problems related to the exports of Uzbek onions that we want to warn the producers about.

We consider onions exported from April to June as early ones, and below we will explain the reasons for such estimates. Theoretically, there may also be “old” onions of the previous year from high-quality storage facilities. Moreover, as the infrastructure for storing vegetables in Uzbekistan develops, it is possible that onions of the old harvest will actively compete in the market with those of the new harvest, especially considering that last year’s onions are more transportable, as a rule, because they are drier. By the way, this is one of the reasons why the further expansion of winter onion crops, encouraged by the government document “On Measures to Increase the Production and Export of Garlic and Vegetable Products using the Tuksonbosti method” can be a very risky idea.
Other reasons why further expansion of winter onion production in Uzbekistan should be carefully analyzed  are listed below.

1. Onions are relatively inexpensive, with prices rarely exceeding 50 US cents per kg. Therefore, all the world’s largest onion exporters have access to cheap logistics, i.e. by sea or are located near importing countries (for example, Poland). The main production regions of Uzbekistan’s winter onions are thousands of kilometers away from sales markets, and the cost of logistics per kilogram, for example, to Moscow, is higher than the average wholesale price for onions in Moscow today. Also, Uzbekistan is one of the most remote countries in the world from the world’s oceans.
2. The explosive growth in onion exports in recent years was due to a number of non-standard factors: an abnormal drought in the EU, which sharply reduced production for two years in a row and stimulated high onion prices, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, which contributed to a sharp but short-term surge in onion consumption in post-soviet countries. However, it is obvious that the coronavirus factor has already ceased to influence the market, and new weather disasters are still likely, but probably should not be counted on.
3. About 90% of early onions from Uzbekistan are supplied to the markets of Russia and Kazakhstan, where local production is actively developing and storage facilities are being built, which reduces dependence on imports. The total imports of onions to Russia and Kazakhstan from April to June grew by 4.7% per year or 11.8 thousand tons during the last five years – almost twice as slow as the exports of onion from Uzbekistan grew. While Uzbekistan is issuing orders to expand winter onion culture, Russia is allocating subsidies to vegetable producers for the development of onion storage infrastructure, which leads to smoothing of price fluctuations, and onion prices increase less sharply by spring. In developed countries, where the storage infrastructure is sufficiently developed, onion prices are completely stable throughout the year. Moreover, onion prices are often lower in spring than during harvesting in autumn. In Ukraine, for example, this happens once every three years in average. It means that the unique “window of opportunity” for the supply of Uzbek onions to Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation is very likely to gradually disappear.
4. Considering the above-mentioned factors, there is a need to diversify the geography of onion exports from Uzbekistan. However, the main global importers of onion – the USA, Malaysia, Great Britain, the EU countries, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, etc. are located even farther from Uzbekistan than Russia, and the logistics is even more complicated and expensive. This does not mean that Uzbekistan cannot find a way to new sales markets, but it will be much more difficult for Uzbekistan than for countries that have access to the sea or are located closer to sales markets.
5. The cost of onion production in Uzbekistan is high and it will grow as the income level of the population rises – a significant part of onion production  in the country is carried out manually. At the same time, onion cultivation in Russia is completely mechanized. Therefore, the profitability of growing early onion in Uzbekistan will decline, unless, prices for it suddenly rise. So far onion prices are expected to rather stabilize at lower levels than rise. For example, onion prices did not exceed 10 US cents per kg throughout the season in Ukraine this year. In general, onions were cheap everywhere this season, as we already wrote.
6. Market competitors are also active – in neighboring Tajikistan, as we have already mentioned, onions cost about 7 US cents per kg – two times cheaper than in Uzbekistan. Transport costs for exports are not much higher than for those from Uzbekistan. At the same time, the cost of producing onions in Tajikistan is lower, taking into account the structure and specifics of production, as well as the cost of labor.
7. Of course, there is another important factor that could help Uzbekistan find alternative sales markets – quality. However, to ensure the required quality, the country needs to significantly modernize production and create an infrastructure for processing (sorting, grading, packaging) onions. It is also necessary to invest in marketing and differentiation from competitors. However, it is not entirely clear why invest in a relatively inexpensive product, that arrives on the Russian market at less than 1 US dollar per kg, if you can invest in the production of blueberries, for example, which are 10-20 times more expensive.

Сообщение Should Uzbekistan continue expanding early onion production for exports? Pros and cons появились сначала на EastFruit.

Russian vegetable producers are not only disappointed with the current situation in the onion market, but now they are also concerned by the trends in the cabbage segment, EastFruit reports. Most producers today are still unable to sell off last year’s cabbage stocks, and the price of 2020 harvest has remained consistently low over the past two months.

At the moment, prices for last year’s cabbage are ranging  from10 to16 rubles/kg ($0.13-0.21/kg), but real transactions are not higher than 12-13 rubles/kg ($0.16-0.17/kg) in the southern and central regions of the country. The difficult situation in the cabbage segment is also observed in the Republic of Dagestan, which is its main exporter to the central regions of the Russian Federation. Today, Dagestani producer offer cabbage at 5 rubles/kg ($0.07/kg) and even in this case the demand is closed to zero.

Many Russian producers are now wondering whether it is worth planting early cabbage while there are large stocks of last year’s unsold product and imports are also high. Early cabbage produced in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan is now exported to the Russian Federation in large volumes regularly. Prices for early imported cabbage in Moscow are ranging from 22 to 28 rubles/kg ($0.29-0.37/kg) in large wholesale. Cabbage from Iran is offered at a slightly higher price – 30-34 rubles/kg ($0.39-0.44/kg).

Usually, farmers from the southern regions are the first to hit the market with early products in Russia, and they will have to start the season much later than in 2020 due to unfavorable weather conditions this year. The prices for the first batches of early cabbage started from 40 rubles/kg ($0.53/kg) last year. However, producers will have to set prices at around 18 rubles/kg (0.24/kg) this year in order to compete with imported products. According to most of the key market players, such price is unprofitable for them, and many Russian producers are already stating that they will either reduce the early vegetables plantations, or completely abandon their production this season.

Сообщение Another disappointment for Russian vegetable producers появились сначала на EastFruit.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Regional Development and Environment of Moldova (MADRM) recorded over 14,000 tons of apples exported from Moldova this January. The volume of apple exports was almost twice as high at about 27,000 tons in January 2019. In February 2021, experts from producer and trader associations claim exports of apples increased, yet official data on this matter is due to appear in the coming days. However, it is already clear that the physical volume of exports in February 2021 will also be lower than the average for the same month in the previous two or three years (about 30,000-35,000 tons).

Nearly all exports of Moldovan apples this winter were shipped to the Russian market as was the case last year. It is worth noting that from 2017-2018, apple exports from Moldova to countries outside the CIS and the European Union decreased significantly from several thousand tons to a maximum of 1,000-1,200 tons.

Representatives of agrarian organizations state that by the beginning of spring 2021 at least 120,000-130,000 tons of apples remain in traders’ refrigerators. This is almost two times less than a year earlier, which is due to a significant reduction in the harvest (610,000 tons in 2019 down to 430,000 tons in 2020) and exports last autumn, which were only about 23,000 tons whereas a year earlier it was more than 40,000 tons.

Read also: Moldovan farmers urged to switch to organic products to protect orchards

Managers from large farms, which also have large stocks of relatively high-quality products and high-tech infrastructure for processing/storing them, do not plan to sharply increase shipments of apples in March. Some are considering postponing active exports until April-May as a preferred strategy given the current stagnation of prices for Moldovan apples in Russia.

In fact, throughout February in Moldova, the average wholesale prices for apples did not change. Prices ranged from 9-10 lei/kg ($0.57/kg) for Renet Simirenko and Idared varieties to 13 lei/kg ($0.74/kg) for Fuji. Only at the end of the month, the minimum prices for Idared and the maximum prices for Jonagold increased by about $0.03/kg, which had practically no effect on the average price level for the fruits of these varieties. A similar picture regarding the relative stability of average wholesale prices for apples is observed in all European countries of the EastFruit price monitoring region. Apparently, this indicates a balance between supply and effective demand primarily in countries with a large domestic market and importing countries.

Bear in mind that the majority of the apple stocks in Moldovan refrigerators belong to exporting intermediaries. In the fall of last year, these traders bought even low-quality (small, deformed, not optimal ripeness) apples at the local market from farmers for a high price. As a result, it is not profitable for them to actively sell this expensive product at the relatively low prices prevailing in the Russian market in winter.

However, keeping products of poor quality until mid-spring is also a big risk. Taking this factor into account, market operators do not exclude that supplies of unsold apples of low-quality for industrial processing will increase in the spring.

Сообщение In 2021, winter exports for Moldovan apples to Russia lags behind last year появились сначала на EastFruit.

EastFruit analysts predict that Russia may sharply increase the volume of imports of potatoes from Egypt in the 2020/21 season. With continued growth in domestic prices and aggravating problems with the quality of Russian tubers in potato warehouses, reports began this week about the arrival of the first bulk shipments of potatoes from Egypt to ports in the southern regions of Russia. Thus, the active import of Egyptian potatoes to Russia this year began about two weeks earlier than last season.

Potatoes from Egypt are currently offered in the southern ports of the country at 40-44 rubles/kg ($0.54-0.60/kg) while a year earlier prices for the first batches of this product did not exceed 32 rubles/kg ($0.40/kg). Local potatoes are becoming more expensive in Russia for the second week in a row. Over the year, potatoes in Russia have risen in price two and a half times and now Russian potato growers sell potatoes of the 2020 harvest from storage at 20-30 rubles/kg ($0.27-0.41/kg).

“The current potato season has returned the development of the situation in the Russian market to its typical course after the rather unexpected transformation of Russia into a net exporter of potatoes in the 2019/20 season,” comments Evgeny Kuzin, the head of international projects at Fruit-Inform.com. “Last season (June 2019 – May 2020), Russia was able to significantly increase its export of potatoes relying on the rush demand both from the traditional markets of the Caucasus and Central Asia and from new directions such as Moldova and Ukraine. Now, the situation has changed quite significantly. Wholesale buyers often report a shortage of high-quality products and prices for Russian potatoes have grown significantly and continue to rise, which is what importers are trying to take advantage of.”

According to EastFruit, the volume of potato imports to Russia amounted to only 310,000 tons in the 2019/20 season (June-May) while Russian potato growers were able to deliver 411,000 tons of their products abroad. Approximately 100,000-110,000 tons of official exports were supplied to the uncontrolled territories of Ukraine. Thus, after deducting these supplies, Russia exported approximately the same volume of potatoes as it imported in the previous season, about 300,000-310,000 tons. Previously, exports of potatoes from Russia never exceeded 100,000-110,000 tons.

Read also: Potatoes are getting pricier by the day in Russia

Russia exports ordinary ware potatoes while imports are based on products offered on the Russian market as early or young potatoes supplied to the country mainly from February to June. These imported potatoes have thick skin and almost no difference from the usual commercial ones. Its main advantage is its high-quality parameters due to deliveries immediately after harvesting in Egypt, Pakistan, and Iran. The main supplier of potatoes to Russia is Egypt, which provided about two-thirds of the total volume of Russian imports in the 2019/20 season. The rest of the volume of Russian imports was from Iran, Pakistan, and China. Deliveries from China were relevant mainly for the Asian regions of the Russian Federation.

“At the beginning of the current season, it became obvious that the export breakthrough of Russian potatoes was rather an exception to the rule and further development of the situation only confirmed such forecasts,” says Evgeny Kuzin. “In terms of exports, Russian suppliers lost the markets of Ukraine and Moldova in the fall of 2020 and only the traditional directions of supplies to Central Asia remained where prices rose sharply. Problems with product quality within the country have created good prospects for an early start of import supplies of potatoes to Russia,” adds the expert.

Back in 2019, EastFruit cautioned about the likelihood of a decrease in production volumes and the reasons for such possible changes in our article, “The Vegetable Growing Crisis in Russia.” Here, we discussed why the profitability of growing potatoes and vegetables is falling and what can be done in this situation by vegetable growers and potato growers.

According to the EastFruit price monitoring data today, Russian potatoes continue to be present in the countries of Central Asia as prices there have really grown significantly recently. In Tajikistan last week, wholesale prices for potatoes reached $0.37/kg and in Uzbekistan, they could even reach $0.46/kg. Price levels on the Moldovan and Ukrainian markets are now even lower than in Russia at an average of $0.23/kg and $0.25/kg respectively.

“Naturally, the main beneficiary of the current growth in prices for Russian potatoes will be Egypt, which in the past few seasons has been the leading exporter of these products to the Russian market. Nevertheless, other suppliers may have certain prospects. However, Uzbekistan and other suppliers from Central Asian countries, which have recently been developing the direction of supplying early potatoes to Russia, may have domestic prices too high to ensure exports this year. In addition, Russian producers of early potatoes this spring can make good money if they increase the area under potatoes right now, given the good prospects for growth in prices for them until May-June,” sums up Evgeny Kuzin.

Сообщение Russia may sharply increase potato imports from Egypt this season появились сначала на EastFruit.