As well as exporting quite a few agricultural products, India also imports a significant amount of fruit and vegetables every year. At this time of year, the main imported produce for one Indian importer includes plums and grapes. However, another season is coming up, when Gala apples from Italy will be imported.
The Indian import market is currently focused on both plums and grapes, says Kamar Kamaruddeen, managing director for Aeden Fruits. “We’ve already imported about 20 containers of plums at this point, with most of them coming from China and Italy. However, we’re getting to the end of the plum season. It’s been satisfactory so far, we usually import around 30 containers of plums annually. We get them from Italy specifically as there have never been any packaging issues and we simply feel they deliver the best quality produce.”
Another one of the more popular products at this time of the year is grapes. We get these from China specifically, as these are much cheaper and require less transit time compared to grapes from other countries. Getting the grapes from China ensures that freshness is maintained and we’re very happy about the quality of grapes that we receive. We’ve currently imported about 15 containers of the grapes. We prefer to get fresh grapes directly from the orchards rather than getting the ones that have been stored in cold rooms. For Indian consumers, Red Globe grapes are the most popular.”
When discussing the packaging, Kamaruddeen admits that packaging was not a big deal for consumers in India until recently. “The modern retail market pays more attention to the packaging of products, which makes it more appealing to the consumer. So nowadays we try our best, together with our suppliers, to have the packaging be as appealing as possible.”
