Sea freighted mangoes could capture European and Chinese markets provided we improve production and post harvest management practices to fetch high prices in these markets. This was stated by Chairman, Board of Directors, Pakistan Horticulture Development & Export Company (PHDEC) at the workshop on “sharing of experiences under AUSAUD funded ASLP mango value chain improvement project” held on Tuesday (January 22) at a local hotel.
In future PHDEC would undertake finance promotional campaigns in Chinese markets, he said. During the workshop activities which were undertaken by Australia-Pakistan Agriculture Sector Linkages Program (ASLP) project during past two years were presented to the industry with the objective to benefit from the observations of the research team and market service.
Project Development Officer, ASLP, Sohail Ayyaz and Adnan Adeel presented the results of their Chinese markets research and trial air consignments sent to China. General Manager, PHDEC, Razaq Ahmad Malkana shared the results of mango controlled atmosphere, sea freighted consignments to the Netherlands and trial air consignments sent to the Chinese Peoples Republic, which are very encouraging and offer a window for increasing our export provided we align our production and post harvest management practices in compliant with the requirements of these markets. For China access to Shanghai and Guangzhou via Hong Kong by sea and Urumqi through silk route could increase our mango export value to China manifold in near future.
Mahmood Nawaz Shah and Syed Zainul Abdain Shah shared their experiences with the participants on the sea freighted consignment to the Netherlands. They explained in detail procedures and protocols for preparing sea freighted consignments and results of the market outturn research conducted by involving the importer, the super store and the consumers at the destination markets. They mentioned that total air cargo space available during mango season for European destinations with all airlines was around 25,000 tons. Considering the taste and aroma of Pakistani mangoes it could easily be said that if we were to minimise transportation costs, size of the market could be captured three folds. Comparison of cost of transportation via sea and air comes to one to four respectively.
Professor Dr Amanullah Malik, post-harvest research and training center, and Dr Muhammad Amin presented results of post-harvest research conducted under ASLP project during the last two years. They shared the harvesting and storages protocols resulting from their post harvest research for enhancing the shelf life of mangoes to capture international markets for Pakistani mangoes by sea.
