Georgia is fostering hazelnut production by launching new rules to regulate hazelnut exports and imports, ensure goods are high quality and eliminate labelling issues.
The Government of Georgia approved the technical regulations at yesterday’s Government meeting.
Georgia’s Agriculture Minister Otar Danelia believed there were vast opportunities to export hazelnuts and the demand for Georgian nuts was increasing internationally.
Georgia received $184 million USD by exporting hazelnuts in the European Union (EU) member countries in 2014 and 2015. This was 30 percent of the total agricultural products export volume,” said Danelia.
We see there are huge export opportunities for Georgian hazelnuts in the EU, so we designed a state program and created technical regulations to further develop this,” he said.
The Minister said the regulations "will strictly control” the quality of hazelnuts Georgia produced. The regulations will help ensure all the nuts produced locally would meet top export quality and be easily sold all throughout the EU.
To develop the technical regulations, the Georgian Government teamed up with the local business sector and the Georgian Hazelnut Growers Association.
