Agrostor organizes the sale of Georgian cherries in the UAE

In February 2022, several Georgian companies participated in the key regional exhibition Gulfood 2022 in Dubai. The director of the Agrostor company, Zurab Alavidze, returned from the exhibition with significant achievements that are important for Georgian farmers – the company interested buyers from the UAE in Georgian fruit and vegetable products.

“Buyers from the UAE were interested in many fruit and vegetable items, but we offered those fruits that we had previously exported by air and in which we have experience in selling. In this case, it is a sweet cherry,” Alavidze said.

Agrostor plans to start exporting cherries as soon as the early harvest starts in Georgia. The earliest cherries are harvested in Eastern Georgia (in Kakheti) from May to the first weeks of June, where the company plans to harvest more than 30 tons of cherries. Then the season continues in the Shida Kartli region.

Last season, Agrostor already exported cherries to Qatar by air. Zurab Alavidze noted that exports to Qatar were problematic due to the limited number of daily flights from Tbilisi and delays in confirmation from airlines. Alavidze expects that this season the company will export even more cherries to the UAE than to Qatar last season, because instead of one flight to Qatar, there are three flights to Dubai daily. According to him, each flight can potentially take out 1-1.5 tons of fruit.

The company is currently negotiating prices with buyers. After that, they will offer reasonable prices to farmers. Most likely, Kakheti farmers will get the best offer of the season, as prices are always higher at the beginning of the season. According to Zurab Alavidze, in the first week of harvest, sweet cherries can cost 15-17 lari/kg ($4.85-$5.5) on the local market.

According to EastFruit price monitoring data, at the beginning of the 2021 season, cherries were sold at an average of 12 lari/kg ($3.5) on the wholesale market, but at the peak of the season prices fell to 4 lari/kg ($1.3).

Source: east-fruit.com