Because of the boycott on fruits and vegetables from Europe since 2014, Russian fruit importers need to search in different markets to find their fruit and vegetable supplies. “We have seen some big changes in the Russian broccoli market in the past few years.
We used to import Spanish broccoli, because the quality is very good and we could get it for a good price. We also imported small amounts of broccoli from Uzbekistan. When the Russian boycott started, importing from Spain was not possible anymore, so we searched for new markets to source our broccoli. The imported volume from Uzbekistan has increased a little bit over the years, but we also found a new broccoli supplier in China,” said Igor Korovushkin from Shanghai Qinwei International Trade Co. during an interview with Fresh Plaza.
In Russia, the Shanghai Qinwei International Trade Co. is one of the top five fruit and vegetable retailers. For broccoli they already import 10 containers a week and that is just one of the products they import from China. Their import volume is growing each year. “We discovered that the broccoli in China is quite good and they have large amounts of it. When we just started importing from China, the quality was as good as the one from Spain. However, they developed their broccoli over the years and the quality now is the same as the quality from Spain, though we have it at an even better price now. Furthermore, Chinese broccoli is widely accepted by the Russian consumers. Before, they sometimes had their doubts, because of the prejudice that Chinese quality is not good. However, they now see that the quality of the broccoli is actually quite good and therefore
it sells quite well in the Russian market.”
Another important point is that the transportation methods have changed over the years. “Before, we mostly imported broccoli by sea, which takes up 40 to 45 days to reach Moscow. We found a very good way, to preserve the broccoli for over a month, but it was not ideal, because the shelf life was very short. Therefore we just could import a limited amount of products. We have now changed our transportation method and started importing by road, which is more expensive but decreases the transport times significantly. They leave from Taichen and Manzhouli,(places close to the border of China), and take 5 to 10 days to reach Moscow. This is much more efficient for us and in this way, we could expand the range of products for import to Russia.”
“Our company controls every step of the chain: we control growing, packaging, transport and retail. In this way we can always guarantee the quality of our product,” concluded Igor Korovushkin.
Shanghai Qinwei International Trade is a company which exports and imports a lot of different fruits and vegetables to the Russian market. They also have a branch office in Russia and they provide services for companies who would like to import to Russia, but don’t know how. They also provide market updates and price reports, to keep the companies up to date about the Russian market.
For more information:
Irina Ambartsumova
Shanghai Qinwei International Trade Co., Ltd.
Mobile：+86 150 2160 0690
Email：qinweish@126.com
Vladimir Lebedev
Tel.：+79 051 195 533
Email：sale1@qinwei.ru
www.qinwei.ru