This was announced by the chairman of the agency Irakli Lekvinadze in the program bm.ge. According to him, it was decided to start monitoring the blueberry market based on the appeal of local farmers, EastFruit notes.
As Irakli Lekvinadze explains, farmers believe that companies involved in the export of products are artificially lowering prices for blueberries.
“Farmers suspect they are being offered a low price. From this point of view, I still think that this is more of a heightened perception than a reality, and the decline in blueberry prices may be due to completely different factors; seasonality is among them – as you know, at the beginning of the season, the export price for Georgian blueberries is high, and then, when the harvest of other players enters the world market, the price begins to decline. All the necessary documentation to start monitoring the market has already been prepared, and this week we will begin the monitoring process to determine whether the opinion of farmers is justified. We will also have recommendations for producers because they probably need to consider several factors to get the best price. If we see some suspicious factors, we will naturally proceed to the market research stage by blueberry exporters from Georgia,” Irakli Lekvinadze explained.
According to farmers, if the market price at the beginning of the season at the end of May was 20 lari ($8 per kg), then in early July, the price fell to 7-8 lari ($2.8-3.2 per kg).
Giorgi Gviniashvili, the owner of Agrolane, which is one of the largest blueberry producers and exporters from Georgia, commented on the situation on the market: The fall in prices is because more than 90% of berries are exported to the only market – this is the Russian Federation. Thus, as supply increases and demand in that market decreases, so does the price. I would also not be guided by the high price at the beginning of the season because there are no such prices for blueberries worldwide. This is an exception because, at the start of the Georgian season, there are still no deliveries from other countries to the Russian market. Therefore, expecting such a high price to continue throughout the season is wrong. The standard world price for blueberries is between 2 and 3 Euros, and the average price in Georgia aligns with this indicator.”
According to the producer, the fact that the production of blueberries has grown significantly in the past few years is not a problem, and the sector’s development is hampered by the lack of sufficient capacities for processing and storing blueberries and dependence on one market.
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Enterprises’ lack of quality standards also prevents manufacturers from diversifying export markets. According to Giorgi, there are now up to a dozen enterprises in Georgia where the standards have been introduced. Although next year the number of such enterprises will double.
“The price can be kept when producers, thanks to the introduced quality and food safety standards, will be able to sell blueberries to the EU countries,” said Giorgi Gviniashvili.
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