Indian grape grower-shipper Sahyadri Farmers Producer Company charged up the rankings to become by some considerable distance the country’s number one grape exporter to the EU last season.
Indian government figures pegged Sahyadri’s exports to Europe in 2014/15 at 6,274 tonnes: almost double Mahindra, which came second with 3,680 tonnes, and higher than other key shippers including PC Foods (3,082 tonnes), Seven Star Export (2,850 tonnes) and Euro Fruits (2,808 tonnes).
Sahyadri’s export achievement to Europe came despite several unseasonable rain and hailstorms, which hit growing regions and affected crop quality. Indian phytosanitary laboratories also flagged some post-harvest residue issues.
“It was a difficult season,” said company director Azhar Tambuwala. “The rains damaged crops, and our volumes were 35 per cent below our original target for the season. But as they say, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
Tambuwala attributes the company’s success in the face of adversity to its unique, fully integrated grower-exporter business model, which comprises a closed group of 1,000+ share-holder growers who work closely with in-house agronomists and log all production information, such as pruning and chemical inputs, on a shared database.
“Hence when in difficult situations, we can screen through and filter out problem areas which then gives us the confidence to make better decisions, choose the right growers and produce, and better serve our customers,” he said.
“Our post-harvest expertise also helped greatly in achieving the volumes: we have pre-coolers to ensure product cools faster in three hours against the traditional eight to12 hours, and have 4,000 pallets storage space. Couple this with our pack-house strengths, being the largest and most efficient in the industry, where we can pack 150 punnets per minute per line, of which we have six.”
Looking ahead to 2016, and Tambuwala says India’s grape season looks good from a volume point of view.
“There was a scare when it did not rain during the usual period, but two weeks ago there were a few days of good rain and all the dams in the Nashik region are just about 65 per cent full which as per officials, is satisfactory,” he said, speaking on 30 September.
“From a crop point of view, growers have started pruning only now for produce to be ready in January-February onwards.”
Girish Sarda, head of grape operations at Indian grape shipper Seven Star Fruits, echoes Tambuwala’s concerns about inadequate rainfall this growing season, and says his growers’ pruning was delayed by three to four weeks.
Nevertheless, Sarda is confident Seven Star Fruits will deliver good quality fruit to Europe that meets strict MRLs in 2016 thanks to its new traceability programme, Farmview, developed last year to meet German supermarket requirements and which is now being rolled out to all its growers.
“Last year was a most unpredictable season due to hailstorms and rain, but for us residues were not an issue,” he said. “Our production team worked on pilot project to meet German supermarket MRLs; it worked successfully as our residue issues were only 3 per cent compare to 35 per cent the year before.”
Seven Star Fruits has worked closely with the same growers for the last seven to eight years, adds Sarda. And he attributes this strong partnership to the company’s year-on-year export growth over the last three years.
“Efforts from our team and management provide the best possible services to growers and a quality product to our customers,” he said. “This has resulted in an increase in our Indian grape export share to Europe from 3 per cent to 15 per cent.
“Each exporter has a different business model here in India,” Sarda added. “Our growers have been associated with us for a long time so the trust there and they look to us as their partner. It is very important how closely an exporter works with its growers, not only during the export season, but from the first day of pruning.”
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