From Sunday, March the 2nd until Friday, March the 7th an important public-private delegation from Uzbekistan is visiting Chile with a full agenda including interviews with government authorities, guilds and companies and visits to facilities and orchards of fresh and dehydrated fruits.
The 13-person delegation headed by Abaskhanov Sardor, president of the Association of Processors and Exporters of Fruits and Vegetables of Uzbekistan, which has 2 years of experience and over 40 companies of various sizes, not all of them exporters, met this Monday with authorities of the Ministry of Agriculture, Odepa and SAG.
Later, he met with the executive Director of Chileprunes, Pedro Acuña who presented the role of the association, shared important information of plums production and exportation volumes, the main global markets and the challenges the industry faces among other themes.
“We want to learn from the Chilean experience and from Chileprunes Association regarding how they have been developing the prune industry because this country had a big development in a short period of time; 20 or 25 years ago, they went from small producers to be the main exporter”, says Abaskhanov Sardor.
As a second subject, he says, he is looking to establish ties and ways of cooperation with Chile. “We are in two different parts of the world, in different hemispheres; where the season is ending for one it has started for a while for the other. We invite the Chilean companies to Uzbekistan to do things together”.
Visit to the O’Higgins Region
On Tuesday, March the 4th, the Uzbek delegation visited facilities and orchards in the O´Higgins Region, precisely Sofruco and Frutexsa and showed a lot of interest in each one of the prune stages and processes; types of drying, the machinery and its providers, soil characteristics, quantity or density of the trees in the orchards among other things.
They also inquired in detail regarding payment dates to the producers, the relationship of trust between producers and exporters, whether there are cooperatives or not in Chile, etc.
The Chilean experts answered kindly each one of their questions. In the first stop they talked with Guillermo Olivares, Sofruco Production Manager; in Frutexa they did the same with its Technical Manager, Ignacio Aguirre.
The visit includes a great variety of subjects that go beyond the Chilean prune sector but for this sector in particular it has a special meaning. Just remember the words of the director of companies, Sebastián Valdés, in Expo Prunes in 2024 when he said that apart from China there could be, in the short term, new global competitors which we would have to observe closely such as Uzbekistan.
“Even though in 2016 it exported nearly 20 thousand tons per year, now it exports 33 thousand tons making this nation the third exporter in the world, only a little bit behind The United States which is the second. And before its products only reached its neighbor countries but now it is more upsetting for us because an important percentage of its volume goes to China and Russia, which are relevant markets for Chile”, he added in that occasion.
This delegation from Uzbekistan comes to Chile financed by UN International Trade Center (ITC) and the International Bank Group which aims to help developing countries.
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