Pakistan is a well-known grower and exporter of kinnow mandarins.
Traditionally the country has exported mandarins to Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
According to Shoaib Ahmad, Director of the National Fruit Processing Factory in Pakistan, “Our country has traditionally been doing business with countries such as Ukraine, Russia and Iran. In these areas we’ve seen heightened competition from other citrus growing countries such as Morocco, Turkey and Egypt. This together with the political instability in Ukraine and Russia for the last 2 to 3 years has caused a decrease in our sales figures. In Ukraine specifically, we’ve seen our 800 containers three years ago, diminish to about 220 containers. Business is bad but we are expecting it to go up once the region stabilizes.”
Pakistan’s mandarins are much better this year, both in terms of volume and quality. “We are expecting our country to export more mandarins compared to last year. Prices are low given that the quality is good and the size, on average, is 15% compared to last year.”
Given the current state of the traditional markets of Pakistani mandarins and its current harvest, it is natural that exporters in Pakistan should look for new markets to sell their products. “Our company is not going to focus on the EU. We’ve actually already received orders from China, Hong Kong , Singapore, Indonesia and The Philippines. China, who used to be a competitor in the mandarin industry, has recently experienced an increase in its prices of Mandarins. This gives Pakistan an opportunity to enter the untapped markets of the Far East,” ended Ahmad.
