Indian importers are always looking for new markets to get their fruit from. While still buying apples from Poland, one importer has made it a mission to start bringing apples and other fruits from Chile towards the Indian market. After being in Chile for months, they now face hard challenges as India has closed off all transport for at least a week, but possibly three weeks.
After having spent several years in Poland, Saurabh Tanwar decided to get a foothold in the Chilean market. His company, Saurabh Fruitways, wanted to start importing apples and other fruits from Chile to India. After having spent two months in Chile, he’s excited about the produce: “In my opinion Chilean apples are better than the Polish and other European apples, especially in terms of quality. Chile is a disease free country in agriculture, but has been dealing with drought this year. Many growers were affected, which shows on the sizes and coloring of the apples. As per our statistics Chile hardly has Premium grade apples this season, which has above 80 per cent coloring. There’s also been dramatically lower production of Extra Fancy grade-apples. When rounding the figures a bit, apple crap was less compared to last year. There was a maximum of 3 to 4 per cent of premium grade Royal Gala production in all of Chile, with only 30 to 40 per cent being Extra Fancy grade.”
“Harvest has already begun and right now it’s on peak demand to export to India. In the beginning of February the harvest of Royal Gala was started. As per our information the first shipment to India was loaded in the third week of February. Generally we were also late with our arrival plans to Chile and as of today all the volume of Royal Gala has sold out. Right now we’re in the middle of harvest of Red Delicious and export should start near the end of March. During that period the harvest of kiwi will also begin,” Tanwar explains. Fruitways is also getting ready to add the kiwifruit to its offering, which is particularly interesting for the Indian market. “We have about 35 – 40 containers’ worth of volume of Gala, Red Delicious and kiwi. India is a good market for Gala Royal, Red Delicious and kiwi. The kiwi is very interesting, as the new custom added tax is now lower when it’s from the origin of Chile. For Chilean kiwi the tax is 15 per cent, where you have to pay 33 per cent for other origins.”
Despite having spent the last couple of months in Chile, Fruitways will continue doing business with Polish apples. “We have no intention to leave Poland as a company, but Chile and its agriculture did amaze us. We have changed our plans entirely. Poland is open to trade with India for apples only, but Chile can export most of its produce to India, like apples, kiwis, blueberries, avocados and grapes. Chile is massive in agriculture. Our plan is to keep our operations and volume from Poland at 30 per cent of our trade and move our operations and volumes to Chile for the remaining 70 per cent of our trade,” Tanwar explains.
“As Fruitways we will be in operation in Poland for only three to four months every year, when the season hits its peak, and keep most of our operation in Chile for the other nine months. We have business in Chile year round and can even expand our supply to also export the produce to other markets than just India, like Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle-East.”
As Fruitways is conducting business from Chile for the first year, they’ve had to face enough challenges as it is. Recently, Tanwar got the disturbing news he will not be able to ship any produce to India in the upcoming week, maybe even several weeks. “The coronavirus is hitting us really hard, though many countries are surviving in terms of trade. Our trade relation between Chile and India is very strong, but Covid-19 is currently the real barrier. We received the following official information from our Custom Agency in India:
‘Sir ,
All Departments , Customs of India , Plant Quarantine , FSSAI are closed up to 31st March and high possibility to prolong the period 15th April until further notice. I will update you later if anything comes positive.’
So we aren’t sure what the situation will look like in the upcoming weeks. We’re all confused. On Sunday, the 22nd of March, the Prime Minister of India announced a total curfew for the entire country. All the fruits markets are closed in all parts of India, including the major ones like Azadpur Market Delhi, APMC Vashi Mumbai, Anna Market Chennai and the Electricity Bangalore. We hope that everything will be back to normal by the 15th of April, but if the curfew will be prolonged then it will definitely mean heavy losses for our Chilean exports. The same recently happened with Chilean cherries arriving in China and getting stuck in the ports there. We don’t want a similar situation with our produce in India. Quite a lot of orders from India have already been cancelled by importers to avoid any possible risk of the goods not being able to arrive. Since this is our first year in Chile, it’s not a great start. We’re worried and confused, but we hope that trade can resume by the time May arrives,” Tanwar concludes.
For more information:
Saurabh Tanwar
Fruitways
Tel: +56 9 8894 6256
Email: saurabh@fruitways.pl