Rising imports have made for abundant supplies of bananas available to Iranian consumers.That abundance has created a market with low prices.
“The total banana volume imported to Iran increased to around 45 percent from 2013 to 2014,” said Alireza Emami, CEO of Zarrin Group, a Tehran-based trader with several decades of experience in the fresh produce industry. Zarrin sources its bananas from Ecuador, India and Costa Rica, but a lot of the recent increase in imports has come by way of the Philippines. In fact, 90 percent of the bananas that Zarrin imports come from the Philippines, noted Emami, partly because the transit time between the Philippines and Iran are much shorter than transit times from Latin American sourced countries. Production in the Philippines was disrupted by a hurricane in 2012, and though there are still residual effects from that storm, it's expected that those will disappear by this summer.
With lots of competition, Emami said that Zarrin tries to distinguish itself with its customer service and relationships with suppliers throughout the world. They have their own ripening room in Tehran, and they were the first company in Iran to establish their own fresh produce brand. Additionally, while most other importers who source fruit from Ecuador do so indirectly through neighboring countries, Zarrin maintains contact with its suppliers in Ecuador and receives direct shipments from that country. While some traders were forced out of the business for issues with payments in the past, Zarrin has thrived in Iran for several decades.
