Tholen - With much enthusiasm, Fabien Dumont and Arjen Stolk of FruitMasters returned last weekend from their trade mission to India. "As FruitMasters, we have been preoccupied with accessing the market for years; that the Indian market is now opening up to so many Dutch apples and pears is a nice reward. Through the highest level, you see that such cases can also go very quickly", says export manager Fabien Dumont. "We have been actively lobbying for three years and decided not to wait. We now hope to reap the rewards from that. As of the new season, we will be starting with the export of Dutch apples and pears."
He certainly sees a lot of potential for the entire hard fruit assortment. "Time will tell if the hard fruit export to India will be a success. India itself produces an enormous volume, and next to that there is a considerable import of apples from Washington and pears from South Africa, for example. But we've seen that our brands fully catch on in other distant destinations, and that we've proven to be a good partner capable of delivering large volumes of quality fruit."
"India is experiencing a huge economic development, people are open to innovation, also in the Fruit and Vegetable sector," believes Fabien. "You see that in a country such as China, the taste for Conference pears really catches on, and then the market is only open for Conference. By far, retail in India is not as developed as in China, but the developments are ongoing. As Dutch exporters, it is important that we supply the Indian market with exceptionally strong, considerably high-quality varieties and that we do not ruin this export opportunity. It can sometimes occur that when a new market opens, exporters want to break into that market inexpensively, but price should not be the leading factor when it comes to export."
