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Macedonian Fresh Produce Exporters Learn from Polish
Experts
 The
potential accession of Macedonia to the EU
creates the need for Macedonian agribusinesses
exporters to become more competitive. This is
needed so they can successfully compete on
regional and local markets in an era of more
open borders, and to capitalize on enhanced
access to EU markets that is brought about by
membership in the EU. To accomplish this
objective AgBiz organizes various
competitiveness enhancements activities. A study
tour to Poland that included B2B meetings was
the most recent such activity, and it achieved
excellent results.
In October, nine Macedonian companies from the
fresh vegetables and table grape value chains
traveled to Poland to better understand their
opportunities in the sixth largest EU market for
fresh fruit and vegetables. With a population of
38.2 million people, Poland is an important
potential market for Macedonian fresh produce
companies. Prior to this study tour, none of the
participants had experience working with Polish
importers.
 Thanks
to USAID and its AgBiz Program, study tour
participants met with 18 of the largest Poland
fresh produce import companies, and visited
three research institutes related to vegetable
crops and the Warsaw produce market. During four
busy days, company presentations were given by
each Macedonian participant and their Polish
counterparts. Then B2B (one–on-one) meetings
took place between every AgBiz customer and
Polish companies that are potential importers of
Macedonian fresh produce. Meetings with research
institutions provided participants exposure to
up-to-date technology that can be adopted to
secure successful fresh produce sales in Polish
markets.
“This was an excellent opportunity to meet with
the largest Polish buyers, and evaluate their
preferences and requirements for imported fresh
products. Also of great importance was the
ability to analyze competition, compare prices
and to assess the new packaging utilized by our
competitors’ fresh produce imported from South
Africa, Italy and Spain as well as their
strategy for approaching and sustaining Poland
market entry.”, said Mr. Dragan Kostadinov,
owner of Vivi Prom company.
This learning experience provided an opportunity
for Macedonian companies to personally determine
how to satisfy the requirements of Polish
buyers, and learn how to be highly competitive.
Each of the companies identified potential new
buyers and wholesalers, studied the latest
trends, and now understand the post-harvest
handling techniques required for their fresh
produce to meet Polish market requirements.
Three months after the study tour, three out of
the nine participants are negotiating with
Poland importers to buy table grapes and fresh
vegetables from Macedonia; and all of them are
starting to adopt the newly gained technologies
and management practices, especially for
grading, packaging and distributing fresh fruits
and vegetables.As part of its value chain
compe-titiveness enhancement activi-ties, AgBiz
has successfully organized seven study tours,
eight trade fairs, eleven training sessions,
substantial short-term technical assistance and
range of other activities. 433 individuals have
participated in these ac-tivities, representing
104 Macedonian agribusinesses. |
