The new harvest for Indian pomegranates is about to start and exporters as well as growers are hoping they can avoid the disaster that happened last year. Unseasonal rains caused 70% of the produce to go to waste. This year, growers are better prepared to minimize the losses.
Girish Sarda, of Indian grower and exporter Magnus Farm Fresh, states the company has had a very successful first season for table grapes: “We’ve created a history by supplying 330 containers of Table Grapes in our very first year of the company’s incorporation as an exporter. This was possible because of the growers’ trust as well as support from the customers, with whom we have been working for last many years. Initially, it was a challenging start, as we had built a new facility for grapes, pomegranate, pomegranate arils and frozen food and in the same year decided to start new export company. We supplied table grapes to over 14 countries, 85-90% of the volumes went to supermarkets or their service providers.”
With the grape season behind them, Magnus Farm Fresh will now switch its focus to their pomegranate season, Sarda explains. “Regarding Pomegranate, last season we didn't start our exports until mid-April 2021, as there was less production and a strong domestic demand. The first couple of shipments were sent to Asia. After the hot summer break, we’re now ready to start Pomegranate with the new harvest to the SEA market as well as Middle East. Peruvian pomegranate is still available on the market and soon Egypt will start as well. Both these territories have an advantage of low fruit cost and bigger size fruit compared to India. Our focus has always remained on Indian Bhagwa, which is the best in quality and has great brix and taste.”
Last year was a difficult season for Indian pomegranate growers, as weather conditions caused a loss of about 70% of the production: “The new pomegranate season will start with a focus on Asian and Middle East markets, but then will target European, Canada, SEA, Russia and other regions during November 2021 till April 2022. Due to heavy unseasonal rain in October 2020, we lost about 70% of the production, which had never happened in the last decade. Now our growers are planning and working on strategies to minimize the losses,” Sarda says. “We can also see change in climatic conditions, which impacts both fruit flowering and setting. Our team is working with growers to meet the customer requirements with respect MRL levels. Our target is to do 75 to 100 containers of Pomegranate during this season between May 2021 to April 2022.”
For the upcoming pomegranate season, Magnus Farm Fresh has set new goals for itself: “We’re a ‘grower exporter company’ and would always like to give consistent reasonable returns to our growers. We expect that we’ll see good production during this season, which could help our growers to stand strong in the international market. Along with pomegranate, we are starting Bahri dates from India to Europe and the UK by air shipment. We have one single grower in the Gujarat state of India, who has more than 60ha of dates production and is interested to associate with us for the long term. The season for Bahri dates will start in a week’s time and should continue until mid-August.” Sarda concludes.
For more information:
Girish Sarda
Magnus Farms
Tel: +919167479099
Email: Girish@magnusfarm.com
www.magnusfarm.com