Italy is known as an exporter of the highest quality fruit and berry nursery plants. According to EastFruit analysts, Italy ranks second in the world in terms of fruit and berry nursery plants exports, after the Netherlands.
Therefore, the first historical export shipment of blueberry plants to Italy from a Ukrainian nursery sounds even more exciting. After all, Ukraine itself is one of the twenty largest importers of Italian nursery plants of fruit and berry crops.
Ukrainian company FruiTech, which produced and exported the first batch of blueberry nursery plants to its client in Italy explained to EastFruit that it was not very easy to convince an Italian buyer to buy nursery plants from Ukraine. The recommendations of a Ukrainian fresh berry exporter, who knew and the Italian buyer and was developed a trust with them, played an important role here.
However, the quality of the Ukraine’s nursery plants and their price turned out to be even more convincing in comparison with competitors from the European Union. “We could offer a product of an EU-quality and a competitive price, which is the main reason the buyer chose us. As a result, we exported to Italy a truckload of blueberry nursery plants of the Reka and Bluegold varieties, which should be enough to plant 9-10 hectares of blueberries,” Oleg Bosyy, Managing Partner of FruiTech LLC, explains.
He also notes that atfer the first export shipment, several more potential Italian customers became interested in purchasing blueberry plants from the Ukrainian nursery. Therefore, it is possible that there will be more shipments to Italy soon.
Prior to that, blueberry plants from Ukrainian nurseries were exported mainly to Georgia and Armenia, and in 2020 a small batch of nursery plants was delivered even to Poland. This year, FruiTech expanded the exports market of blueberry nursery plants to include Kazakhstan and Moldova. They are also now considering requests from potential buyers of high-quality berry planting material from several Central Asian countries, where interest in blueberry cultivation has grown significantly recently.
As EastFruit notes, FruiTech is known among Ukrainian and Eastern European berry producers for its transparency in doing business and for an uncompromising fight against violations of intellectual property rights for berry varieties.
FruiTech LLC itself considers the management of intellectual property rights of plant varieties to be its main activity. “The introduction, production testing, state registration and licensing of new, promising varieties of fruit and berry crops in cooperation with leading scientific institutions and breeding centers from around the world is the basis for the activity of FruiTech LLC,” the company’s website says.
Moreover, FruiTech, in cooperation with the best Ukrainian and foreign producers of planting material, offers high-quality certified nursery plants of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and tall blueberries for commercial producers of berry crops and is an important source of high-quality inputs for professional nurseries. The company also provides full technological support and consulting support for clients with the involvement of the best Ukrainian and foreign specialists. Such support includes the development of technological maps, planning of the protection system, recommendations for plant fertilization and field visits during the organization of important technological operations.
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