Market News

Auchan develops online sales in Russia

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Aresh Alamir has been appointed as a director of e-commerce sales of “Auchan Russia”. Aresh Alamir is also a marketing director and a member of the board of directors at “Auchan Russia”.

Representatives of “Auchan Russia” say that the new appointment has been created because the company pays a lot of attention to the development of e-commerce and sees this direction as an important one.

The new project will involve almost all kinds of products including food, whereas before customers could order online only furniture and garden items.

www.fruitnews.ru

Searches at Sofiyskaya warehouses

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The Main Investigations Directorate of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation reports that are searches conducted at the vegetable warehouse Sofiyskaya in St. Petersburg. The searches are conducted as a part of a fraud criminal case investigation.

According to investigation officers, the criminal case has been initiated over an unreasonable VAT refund by persons acting on behalf of OOO “Nika-Frukt” in 2011-2012. The VAT refund amounted to almost 80 million rubles from the federal budget of the Russian Federation.

The goal of the searches conducted at the vegetable warehouse Sofiyskaya is to discover and impound any items and documents related to the criminal case, as well as those items which are prohibited from civil circulation.

Also the police are going to check the adherence to immigration laws at the vegetable warehouse Sofiyskaya.

Representatives of the Azerbaijani diaspora, which are doing business at the warehouse Sofiyskaya, have stated that according to their information sources the city authorities are going to close the vegetable warehouse Sofiyskaya as well as the vegetable warehouse on Salova street.

www.regions.ru

Biryulevo warehouse closed until mid-January

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The Moscow city court has found lawful the decision to suspend a vegetable warehouse that turned out to be in the focus of the interethnic conflict in the Moscow district Biryulevo for 90 days. Thus, the appeal from the lawyers of the management company Novye Cheremushki was turned down.

“Checking the arguments, I find the court verdict passed by the judge of the Chertanovsky court lawful,” Judge Aleksander Ponomarev said.

On October 16, the Chertanovsky court satisfied the demand from the territorial branch of the Russian consumer rights watchdog to levy an administrative fine on the closed joint stock company Novye Cheremushki for violation of the legislation in the provision of sanitary and epidemiological wellbeing of people and suspended the vegetable warehouse for three months.

The court verdict took effect on Wednesday.

 

www.itar-tass.com

Gennady Onishchenko is relieved from the post of the Rospotrebnadzor head

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Anna Popova is appointed as acting head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Protection of Consumer Rights and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor). Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed the decree to this effect, Russian prime minister’s spokesperson Natalya Timakova said.

Gennady Onishchenko is relieved from the post of the Rospotrebnadzor head over the expiry of a one-year contract concluded with him upon reaching the age of 60 years.

“Concluding this contract right a year ago Prime Minister Medvedev proposed to Gennady Onishchenko to move to the post of an aide of the prime minister in the government’s staff upon the expiry of this contract,” Timakova added. “Medvedev also signed the specific resolution to relieve Onishchenko from the post of the Rospotrebnadzor head and appoint him as aide to the prime minister,” she added.

Timakova noted that Anna Popova is appointed as acting head of the Russian consumer rights watchdog. “The final decision on a candidacy of the head of this agency will be taken later,” the spokesperson added.

 

www.itar-tass.com

Russian retailers see Washington harvest

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Produce buyers from five Russian retail chains, who came to Washington State this week to learn about the tree fruit industry, said they were impressed by the technology in orchards and packing houses, as well as by the openness of the people.

This was the first trip to the United States for the buyers, who represent four retailers in western Russia and one in the Russian Far East. They were accompanied by Ksenia Gorovaya of CrispConsulting, who represents the Washington Apple Commission and Pear Bureau Northwest in Russia.

Rebecca Lyons, export marketing manager with the Apple Commission, said such reverse trade missions are fairly rare and are usually arranged for buyers in new markets where the tree fruit industry doesn’t have many existing contacts.

Russia is an established market, but Gorovaya said what’s new is that retailers are beginning to import directly from suppliers. Traditionally, fruit has been shipped through importers and then wholesalers before reaching retailers.

“Now, they’re cutting out the middle man,” she said. However, it will be a gradual process because importers are still strong and the retail industry is not consolidated. No single retailer in Russia has more than a 5 percent market share.

www.goodfruit.com

Closure of Pokrovskaya benefits large retailers

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After the fruit and vegetable warehouse Pokrovskaya in Biryulyovo was closed, “RBC Daily” has talked to those whose businesses are somehow influenced by what is going on in the Russian fruit and vegetable market: wholesalers, restaurant owners , suppliers, managers of still operating fruit and vegetable warehouses, etc.

It turned out that owners of small retail stores, non-chain restaurants and vegetable kiosks are those who have faced the major problems, as they were purchasing their goods directly in Biryulyovo. Right now they still can’t find an alternative source of supply for the same old price.

However, big retail market players are the winners in this situation. They have pointed out that there is an increase in demand, which is, in their opinion, due to the shift of the customers who used to purchase products in convenience stores near their homes and at the market. For example, METRO Cash & Carry say that they are observing a tendency of an increasing demand for fresh vegetables and fruits.

www.retailer.ru

 

Georgian fruit exports to Russia resumed

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Georgian fruit and citrus fruit exports to Russia will be resumed on October 14th with permission of Rosselkhoznadzor. According to Rosselkhoznadzor representatives the first fruit to be exported to Russia will be mandarins.

The import of Georgian vegetables, fruit, water, and wine was banned in 2006 over quality issues. In 2013 Rosselkhoznadzor experts inspected a number of Georgian enterprises. As a result the embargo on Georgian tea and nuts was cancelled in the middle of 2013.

The renewal of Georgian exports will be in autumn and winter, when citrus fruit, especially mandarins, are in high demand in Russia. Georgia intends to export 70,000 tons of mandarins to Russia in 2013.

www.itar-tass.com

Russia confirms itself as a key market for Spar

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Spar International strengthened its position in Russia with the signing of a license agreement with two local partners: Anix and the Semya Group. The first operates in the region of Altai, while the second is in Kaliningrad.

With these two new partnerships, the multinational totals five new distribution partners in the Russian market in the last twelve months. Apart from the two regions previously mentioned, Spar has also reached the provinces of Tyumen, Irkutsk and Tomsk this year.

Additionally, the company has confirmed that its partner, Spar Retail, which operates in the Moscow area, will invest 20 million Euro in a plan to reform and expand its 27 facilities with the aim of strengthening the Spar brand positioning in fresh food and customer service.

Spar Group sales in Russia grew by 21 % in 2012 amounting to more than 1,130 million Euro. By the end of July, the turnover of the company had grown more than 18 %. Numbers that make the Russian market one of the most important markets for the brand.

Spar, which came into Russia in 2001, currently has 13 local partners and operates over 300 stores, including supermarket, hypermarket and convenience stores.

www.freshplaza.com

US cranberry growers look for ways to trim surplus

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Cranberry growers in the United States are battling steep surpluses and declining prices, along with increased competition from Canadian and overseas producers.

To offset the imbalances, the U.S. Cranberry Marketing Committee, based in Wareham, Mass., is pursuing an “aggressive decision to get very active to create more demand,” according to Scott Soares, the committee’s executive director.

He said the group’s international market development subcommittee is attempting to make inroads in China and Russia, and is conducting investigative work in Brazil and India.

Domestically, the committee is conversing with USDA to generate more federal purchases. USDA’s recent $5 million purchase, while taking 110,00 to 130,000 barrels off the market, falls short of the 500,000 barrels the industry had targeted for the buy.

The United States produced 402,300 tons of cranberries last year, an increase from 385,700 the year previous. Before an expansion that involved replanting and larger bogs to meet anticipated demand that largely did not materialize, the industry produced 327,700 tons in 2007.

Cranberry operations in Wisconsin, which produces the majority of the world’s cranberry crop, have expanded acreage and production in recent years based on demands from Ocean Spray and other processors, which anticipated strong growth in overseas sales of juice and sweetened, dried cranberries. But overseas increases amounted to just 2 percent to 3 percent, while demand in the U.S. market also was bottoming out due to the recession.

U.S. farmers were left with a huge excess of cranberries this fall, after an unanticipated rise in production in Canada. Farmers who don’t belong to the Ocean Spray cooperative have received $22 to $28 per 100 pounds for a fall crop that cost them $25 to $30 per 100 pounds to produce. Some analysts predict those prices could fall to $15 to $18 per 100 pounds if market conditions don’t improve for the 2013 crop.

www.fruitgrowersnews.com

US: Pear harvest strong in Pacific Northwest

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Oregon and Washington’s combined pear harvest will approach a record this year, with growers and packers reporting a heavy yield of large, high-quality fruit.

Estimates made in June, well before picking began, projected a fresh market harvest of 19.8 million 44-pound boxes, the standard measurement unit. The estimate was 4 percent larger than the five-year average, and would have made it the third largest crop grown by the Wenatchee and Yakima regions of Washington and the Mid-Columbia and Medford regions of Oregon.

Some growers were hard-pressed to find enough pickers at peak harvest in mid-September, when the Hood River Valley alone employed about 1,800 pickers a day. The crunch has passed, however. Growers in the upper valley, where fruit comes on later than at lower elevations, will finish picking soon, said Jean Godfrey, executive director of the Columbia Gorge Fruit Growers in Hood River.

“We have a very heavy crop, a beautiful crop, larger than normal,” Godfrey said.
Nathan Duckwall, assistant production manager at Duckwall Fruit in Odell, said his company may pack 10 percent more boxes than last year. “We had really good growing conditions this year, a good hot summer,” he said. “The size of the fruit is really big, too.”

The larger the pears, the fewer it takes to fill a box, which results in increased box production numbers. No matter the final production numbers, the harvest marks another good turn for Oregon and Washington pear growers.

About one-third of the crop that moves through Duckwall is exported. Top export markets include Mexico, Canada, Russia, Brazil, Colombia, Hong Kong and India. The latter is one of the strongest growth market for Northwest growers, according to Pear Bureau Northwest, a non-profit marketing firm that represents about 1,600 growers in Oregon and Washington.

China opened its door to U.S. pears for the first time in February, and is projected to become a top 10 market for Northwest growers within three years, according to the Pear Bureau. Pears packed by Duckwall were the first into China, Nathan Duckwall said. He’s cautious about the future impact of that market, however. “I don’t think it will be that big,” he said. “It’s significant, but it’s not a game changer.”

www.freshplaza.com