Nergeta: Northern Hemisphere's Highest Quality Green Kiwifruit

ქართული კივი იაპონიაში

2017-03-24T19:32:00.000+04:00

Nergeta Kiwifruit's European Premiere

2015-01-22T10:20:00.002+04:00

An extraordinary achievement for Nergeta and a great step for the promotion of Georgian agriculture: starting 21st January, Nergeta kiwifruit is on the shelves of one of the leading global supermarket chains, Lidl.

Our class I kiwifruit is offered at Lidl stores in following German towns:

Filderstadt-Bernhausen, Plattenhard, Fasanenhof, Fellbach, Plochingen, Sindelfingen, Nagold, Denkendorf, Wendlingen, also in Neckarsulm and Heilbronn.

Here are the very first photos of this great day in the history of Nergeta:

Konstantine Vekua

22.01.2015

Strawberry Open and Tunnel Experiment

2012-11-10T17:49:00.000+04:00

Consumer tests give you so much to think about: Feijoa Tasting Day in Wageningen

2012-10-26T22:58:00.002+04:00

Nieuw uit Georgie --- New from Georgia

Georgia and New Zealand have something in common: passion to one exotic fruit: Feijoa. While in these countries everyone loves this fruit and enjoy to consume it fresh as well as convert into jams and even wine, both of us just can't understand how the rest of the world is not as keen on Feijoa as we are ourselves. At Nergeta company we are all passionate about Feijoa too and we too think about the ways of how to make it known and appreciated by consumers outside our country.

Fruit Company's shop is nicest in Wageningen

because of selection of higher end quality products it offers.

Our sampling took place in this shop

Before we move to our Feijoa Consumer Tasting Day which Nergeta ran in Wageningen, The Netherlands, I would like to recall some basics of customer acceptance of probably any new fruit:

1. sensory and visual liking: taste, flavour, color, shape, size
2. cost
3. own taste preferences, culture,
4. what is that unique feature of new fruit and how it affects consumer's decision to add this new fruit to her/his existing "default" fruit menu or at least to make her/him interested to buy once a month?
5. how important and "real" are health benefits
6. what is the structure of supply chain and particularly post harvest shelf life which affects availability and marketing period of the fruit: less the storability more difficult to run marketing campaigns

So far only New Zealand made good efforts to market it internationally but it did not end with much success and even if we apply 6th criteria we can see why: Feijoa has only 4 weeks of post-harvest shelf-life and this already fully excluded reliance of supply chain on lower cost sea shipments since transit time from Auckland to London would fully consume its shelf life. Therefore our New Zealand friends had to use expensive air-freight model which made Feijoa one of the most expensive fruit: it was offered at above 10£/kg. One would argue that some fruits actually cost this much or even more but it did not prevent their success and it is true however unlike strawberries and raspberries it is very difficult to sell feijoa type of shape fruit at these price levels. Consumers do pay 3-4£ for 200gr of blueberries but this much blueberries can be enjoyed by 4 persons but it is much more difficult for consumer to pay 1£ for one piece of Feijoa, Kiwifruit, Apple and the kind of round or oval fruits.

Now, coming back to 6th criteria Georgia is in a better position since it can use lower cost truck shipments to Hamburg or Rotterdam and still have another 18-20 days of shelf life after arrival day. This is a quite fundamental structural difference but we still need to pay attention to remaining 5 criteria and get evidences that would justify establishment of export oriented commercial orchards.

This is why we decided to get in face to face contact with consumers and run several product free tasting days and ask questions and receive their comments. This does not mean we will not try to cooperate with chain facilitators such as research institutes, consumer science groups etc.

So, we ran first such free tasting day in a specialized fruit shop in Wageningen, the Netherlands and we found out some previously unexpected consumer impressions and comments, both positive as well as negative. It proved that we need to do such tests many more times and desirably also in cooperation with professional consumer science institutes.

I got 28 consumers to taste our Feijoa and they all answered to some questions and some provided with their impressions without waiting for questions. In first 20 minutes most of consumers who tasted were above 60 years old and female and they mostly disliked the fruit and said they would not buy it in the future. Then saw mostly male and female consumers in between 20 and 40 years and they were mostly liking the fruit and said that they would buy it at least once in a season. This group provided their Feijoa impressions with enthusiasm:

1. male, 28: generally buys exotic fruits and would also buy Feijoa at least once a season. Feijoa reminds him of the taste of Kiwifruit and Passionfruit but says that Feijoa's taste is still unique and he did not expect such a flavour/aroma existed in the nature.

2. Female, 34: Reminds of Passion Fruit, Looks a bit like Fig, thinks that flavor is unique

3. Female, 20: Tastes like Kiwifruit, would buy at least once a season if price is not above 0.50eur per piece.

4. Female, 29: Reminds of Kiwifruit, does not consider the taste as special but likely to buy once a season

5. Female, 62: Unique taste, would definitely buy once in a season

6. Male, 70: Did not like at all

7. Female, 70: Unique, memorable taste, would buy once a year

8. Female, 60: Tastes like bubble gum, pink bubble, would only buy if it is priced cheaply

9. Female, 65: Needs time to get used, curious taste, does not look like anything else, did not like first bite but liked 2nd bite and "second wave" of taste.

10. Female, 60: Strange taste, not bad, needs time to get used

11. Female, 26: Did not like the outer rim of the fruit, but liked juicy part. Taste seemed a bit artificial, a bit un-natural.

12. Female, 60: Very sweet inside (caramel like juice), she would buy it to eat with yogurt

13. Female, 60: Surprising, positive, a cross of Banana and Kiwifruit, would likely enjoy in fruit salad

14. Female, 40: looks and tastes a bit like Cactus, certainly very different taste

15. Female, 42: a bit of Pear like, a bit of Melon, looks a bit like Lime, exotic cut profile, would like with fruit salad.

16. Female, 70: Very nice, better than Kiwifruit, slightly bitter but sweet enough, took one home for husband

17. Male, 45 with ~10 years old daughter: Liked a lot, especially liked juicy part, did not like the texture of outside rim.

Here are some of the pictures of today's event:

Table cover, plates, spoons, the fruit, Ready to Go!

Do you find cut profile attractive? --- this was one of the questions I asked to Dutch consumers

The Dutch lady tastes Feijoa for the first time

There were nice moments when our consumes talked to each other and shared their Feijoa impressions

Konstantine Vekua
nergeta@gmail.com

The blogger is horticultural entrepreneur from Georgia, co-founder of Nergeta Ltd. He currently is doing Master's at Van Hall Larenstein, Wageningen University and will be in the Netherlands till September 2013

Bees for pollination of kiwifruit

2012-09-07T12:23:00.003+04:00

Did you know that each hectare of kiwifruit orchard needs 8 bee families for good pollination result during flowering in May? Bees must be brought after about 10% of flowers opening, not before and their exit should face morning sun to let them get out and work as early as possible. Why are bees needed? Because pollen of male flowers should come in contact with female flowers and intensity of such contact results in more bigger sized kiwifruit at the harvest time. Only well pollinate flowers can produce good sized fruit and for farmers it is very important since the price difference between small and big sized kiwifruit (of say between 75gr/piece and 120gr/piece) can be double.

In Georgia we do not yet have specialized pollination beekeeper contractors. Therefore to be on the safe side, we decided to invest in our own bee program. We collected our bee families in village Mukhuri, Samegrelo area --- place known as beekeeping cluster and just under the Caucasian mountains.

One interesting fact is that Georgian Grey Bee specie has the longest proboscis (7.2mm) in the world and is known for high honey and wax productivity, fertility of queen bees, resistance to cold winter, long wings, a weak swarming ability, effective collection of nectar and honey even in the conditions of their scarcity, active defense of nests, an ability to work in foggy and drizzly weather

Picture: our bees just returned from mountains

Samegrelo Micro-Zone Unaffected by Frost Siege

2012-02-18T01:02:00.002+04:00

If you are agricultural entrepreneur looking for new locations in so called "Eastern Europe" to invest in horticultural ventures and develop fruit or vegetables enterprises then you need to read this post and look at exhibited 2 meteo maps.

So far Dutch, English or German horticultural ventures have been focusing on countries like Romania, Bulgaria, Poland etc. There are several reasons for this such as lower cost of production, promising local market sizes, proximity to their original, home markets, understandable legal and operating environment.

However, there is one more country further east as well as farther south across Black Sea: Georgia. While for political considerations this country is mostly mentioned as (a distant) Eastern Europe, for climatic and growing conditions it should never be considered together with Eastern Europe.

Georgia's unique climate is made up by 3500m to 5000m high Greater Caucasus mountains range on the north which stops cold Nordic air masses. On its south there is 2500-3500m high Minor Caucasus mountains range which moderate too hot air masses from Arabian deserts. Within Georgia in the west side, there is one particular region called Samegrelo which additionally gets humidity in Summer and warm air in Winter from Black Sea. During recent frost siege over wider region Samegrelo also experienced frosts but not below -3C on 3 nights while during most critical period daytime temperatures mostly maintained +4C...+8C.

In other "normal" years average temperature of coldest month of January is between +5C and +9C.

Now the promised maps. You see Samegrelo as being circled on the east side of Black Sea.

Map 1: while in most of eastern Europe temperatures dropped below -20C,

Samegrelo area remained positive temperature region

Map 2: Green colored areas are positive temperature areas.

As you can see that even within Georgia, Samegrelo is the warmest zone.

Maps belong to Swiss based weather forecasting services company Meteoblue AG.

The author of this entry is horticultural entrepreneur Konstantine Vekua who together with his German and New Zealand friends are developing selected fruits value chains in Samegrelo, Georgia. The company already manages 24ha kiwifruit orchard and plans to develop berries, feijoa and persimmon orchards by the end of year.

To contact me, email: Konstantine.Vekua@nergeta.ge

Let's check the roots

2012-02-15T21:56:00.003+04:00

If you are growing perennial crops, you will have to wait at least 3 years before seeing first crop and first results of your efforts. For some fruit crops this can take 5-7 years. In between you have to think if everything will be fine. Imagine, worrying about what's going to come around in 5 years time! This seems quite a struggle but if you know what signs to watch and check, then it is a lot easier to deal with anxiety.

Here, after exactly a year, we put out some plants from last year's planting campaign. We wanted to see how well the root system has developed and what we have seen exceeded our expectations. This means everything is going in right direction and we should keep our good work.

Picture: Comparing root volumes of the plant (left) which was planted last year and the plant (right) which we just got from nursery few days ago. A year ago the plant on the left was as small as the one on the right.

Picture: Closer look at the well growing kiwifruit plant

To contact the blogger, email:

Konstantine.Vekua@nergeta.ge

We Got New Measuring Tools

2011-04-07T15:21:00.005+04:00

Professional orchard management is a little science. You depend on what's below and above your soil. You should know what is the level of critical nutrients in the soil but you should also know your soil's acidity and its water holding capacity. Many samples are sent to professional labs every year but modern times offer tools to make some express analyses right in the field.

We bought express pH tester and tensiometer from German company Stelzner. With these, we can check acidity in unlimited number of spots and we can monitor our soil's water holding capacity in several spots. Tensiometer will help us to know how much water/humidity is near the root zone and if irrigation is needed or not. It is great to know what's beneath!

Picture: Water Tensiometer in Our Kiwifruit Orchard

Berlin Fruit Exhibition: Provenance Paradox & Continuous Assurance of Quality

2011-03-17T16:36:00.010+04:00

Picture: One of exhibitor's stand in Berlin

Every year Berlin hosts the biggest European trade exhibition of fruits and vegetables. 9000 participants and more than 50000 visitors: it is very Große. We decided to visit it to talk with our future customers, learn about their approaches and just get the sense of trading environment. We went there with the list of questions in our writing pad but for us the most important question was: What should we do to price our kiwifruit (whenever we start to export) according to its quality and taste and not according to the perceptions about the country of its origin.

What are we talking about here? Well, while quality of the product is important, the quality is not the only factor and buying side will try to justify lower bidding price if the product comes from less known country, or less known country for that product category. Example: one Venezuelan chocolate and cocoa beans producer El Rey supplies leading European chocolate makers with its high quality cocoa but is not able to sell its own chocolate at the same or even similar prices of European chocolates made on the same very cocoa. This is called Provenance Paradox and you can get more examples and more analysis on this from Harvard professor Rohit Deshpandé here http://tinyurl.com/2bhw23x

Is this barrier impossible to overcome for Georgian companies(well, for really quality Georgian companies)? As we talk about Provenance Paradox it is worth mentioning that Swiss watches, German cars and French wines gained and keep their unrivalled reputation through continuous and uninterrupted delivery of quality and over and over and over, every single year since 1855 Château Lafite and Mercedes Benz since 1886 deliver highest imaginable and possible customer satisfaction. Customers just get used to these brands' qualities. Countries are also like brands. So we think that constant delivery of quality leads to absence of any doubts and customers start to affiliate certain products to certain companies and countries.

Georgian companies and particularly their owners and managers should "just" define quality of product as their N:1 priority, make and always keep it. Quality for customers is like a promise which you either keep or break.

Let's give an example. We see in Georgian supermarkets how some X brand puts a nice product promotional display. They look very sophisticated but if we look at some other Y company's display, we see wearing facing materials, edgy corners, glass not being rounded(one can cut a finger) etc. Customers of course notice these differences and make judgements. These judgements are in favour of the company which did not stop just at making a good chocolate and went further to offer a better display or a better packaging i.e. gave more to customers. Quality of even simple product such as fruit consists of 20, 25 or 30 nuances and all these nuances should be thought after from first year, every year.

To Contact the blogger, email:
nergeta@gmail.com

Setting Up Windshelters

2011-03-06T16:36:00.002+04:00

It's March and we are setting up artificial wind shelters in our orchard. They will not let occassional strong winds to break young shoots of our kiwifruit plants.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Our Blog in Georgian Language

2011-02-26T23:52:00.001+04:00

Just to inform our Georgian readers that we will be running blog in Georgian language and it's here: http://www.nergeta-geo.blogspot.com/

Post Driving by Machine

2011-01-29T18:44:00.001+04:00

Kiwifruit vines cannot support themselves and wooden posts and wires are needed to support the canopy. While "inside" posts can be set manually, it is advisable to use hydraulic post driver for perimeter, end and side posts. Today we started to learn how to use this machine.

Picture: First Day of Post Driving

Video: Planting Our Kiwi

2011-01-25T15:36:00.000+04:00

This most recent video on our YouTube channel. You see how our team is planting kiwifruits. They are placing it directly on the point marked by the bamboo pole, then make sure that the width of the hole is wide enough for the roots to fit, and also spreading roots evenly to maximize feeding area for the vine. We planted several thousand fruits that way, in the last two weeks. More images to follow.

Kiwi Planting | Live Image from Field

2011-01-25T12:38:00.003+04:00

Here you see some impressions directly from planting. The weather is good, the sun is shining, and we are managing to get many plants into the ground, about 600 per day. More images to follow.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

We Got Plants!!!

2011-01-25T09:00:00.003+04:00

Yesterday we got 2 year old Hayward green kiwifruit plants and this morning we started to plant them. Below you see a picture of a well developed root system of kiwifruit plant.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Website or Facebook? How to Connect to Consumers?

2011-01-07T00:10:00.010+04:00

We started to think about it as soon as we started to think about sales. As Facebook users ourselves with our profiles we saw how many interesting pages there were representing different companies and products. We liked (not Facebook's like but just a like as a like) some of them and we did not like (again just a pre-Facebook like) some. We thought what would people think about our page and what and how should we communicate to be likable (now both, Facebook and a real like).

We even learned that there are many firms who offer and sell to companies their consultancies on how to become popular on Facebook and how to "even measure impact of Facebook activities on sales, brand image etc".

While not being big experts on this we realised one thing from the begining: Facebook was different from website in that here (on Facebook) we should be informal to people who liked us. Unlike websites, Facebook did not look like sphere of companies but rather a sphere of individuals, people, friends. People log to Facebook to have a very informal, private chat with their friends, share funny photos and statuses, post links to various music.

So, we decided to have a page and try to post an engagable content. We also try to not post anything without relevant photo or video because we observed visual impressions are important. As someone said once: "what I saw I remember, what I heard I forgot." We did not market this a lot yet, but already have people checking in with us.

Click here to see our facebook fan page.

So, what kind of posts do we post? Here are some of examples: with our first post we put a picture of our kiwifruit being presented at one of street fruit seller's tables, and we informed our fans when we started selling and where . Then we put 4 pictures representing person (Isabel Fraser) who brought wild kiwifruit seeds to New Zealand in 1904, also a map of China, which is the homeland of kiwifruit, the picture of man after whom the most popular kiwifruit variety is named, and all these pictures were accompanied with relevant text messages. On another occasion we again put pictures of the Georgian region Samegrelo which pioneered kiwifruit into Georgia and gave a short history of kiwifruit arrival to Georgia.

We also obtained permission from New Zealand dietary expert to put her kiwifruit recipes on our fan page, published the copy of laboratory test on our kiwifruit, posted pictures from our trip to New Zealand kiwifruit growers. It is not yet about scale for us, but about using various channels to communicate that we want our consumers to be happy, and that we care for quality first and foremost.

As for the website, we decided to build this soon, to communicate with our non-consumer audience mostly such as suppliers, retailers and wholesale buyers, and other potential business partners. Coming soon.

To contact the blogger, email:
Konstantine.Vekua@nergeta.ge

Nergeta Logo is a Protected Trademark

2010-11-25T01:55:00.003+04:00

We are pleased to hear from the Georgian Patent Office that our logo has now been copyrighted and protected by law as the Nergeta logo. We are very happy that our logo was made by ourselves and that we did not "delegate" it to some outside design company. We now believe that if you look at your product (literally) for many days, think about how you can express your product and its best features graphically, you will eventually arrive to your own design idea. Our own work was the result of focus on the product and search for most relevant geometrical shapes to transform our product vision into a logo.

As we were doing what we really loved to do, we wanted to have our own unique logo and stickers for two main reasons:
1. our work should bear "our" mark, distinctive, simple and beautiful.
2. consumer should like our logo and perceive it as a sign of quality, and memorise it as that.

We started with the traditional approach: visiting three famous advertising and branding agencies in Tbilisi. We got the impression that those 1 hour meetings just were not enough for them to undertand what we stood for, what we wanted to say with a logo and we decided to do homework and give it several weeks of thinking.

We were inspired by MC Saatchi's: "it is easier to complicate than to simplify" and "brutal simplicity of thought". After several weeks of homework we decided to link kiwifruit's visual features to different geometrical shapes and then gave our hand made sketches to friend, a designer by training, Mari Balavadze, to make those professional computer graphics and also add her own ideas. We did not get to our final version at the first attempt, actually we rejected several of our own works and together with Mari and other friends arrived to what is now our logo: 9 oval slices that together resemble the rising sun and we gave flesh green colour to oval slices and put black circles to establish the connection to our product: kiwifruit.

It was not an easy task and at one point we thought (really) that we just could not produce a logo which would look original and in the meantime be immediately associated with kiwifruit. However we made it and looking back, we can say that it is thanks to our own homework, many many hours of producing numerous options, then going through them critically, rejecting many of them and finally arriving to what we thought was a worthy one.

Contact me at:
Konstantine.Vekua@nergeta.ge

Nergeta Press Appearance

2010-11-15T18:14:00.000+04:00

We have not concentrated much on generating coverage in the press, since we primarily want to get the product right. However, we have been approached by some journalists, and here is one of the first problem articles written about this, by the November issue of Georgian Products (issued by the publishing house Navigator).

If you want the full PDF, let us know.

How Far Would We Go For Knowledge? As Far As New Zealand

2010-08-23T23:34:00.005+04:00

While China is the origin of wild kiwifruit, New Zealand growers, nurserymen and scientists pushed it from obscurity into becoming one of the world's top fruits. It took a lot of work and trials and this is why New Zealand became most sophisticated and knowledgeable in kiwifruit propagation, cultivation and marketing.

As we wanted to learn from them we decided to visit New Zealand where we saw and heard many useful things for our own orchard development. As one of our new friends told us we have "no excuses now". It will take 3 to 4 years to see if we made a good use of their advice and here we just give you some of photos of this fascinating trip.

countdown to 18 hour avia-marathon in Dubai airport

New Zealand, a country of volcanic icelands

Pacific Ocean "nebulising" the forest

Auckland, not the capital of New Zealand

Eden Park, "All Blacks" play here

Kiwifruit -- the reason of our trip

Natural, Bio, Eco, Local or What?

2010-04-16T01:45:00.004+04:00

Everyday in Georgia and elsewhere we see that many companies from consumer food industries emphasize two main points: that their products are 100% natural (bio, ecologically clean) and that they are local. In Georgia lots of consumers also think that "local" automatically means "healthy, natural" in the sense of what "organic" means for instance in Germany.

We think that as soon as there will be several Georgian producers of labeled fruit instead of one, companies will need to offer more than just emphasizing the "local origin of their product". For this reason we ignored the "local" argument from the start and focused on quality, the real quality. We also do not just play with words like "natural" and "bio" without a relevant test report to prove it.

As a sign of our approach, we took samples of our kiwifruit to an accredited lab, had a test done, and published it on our Facebook fan page as well as on Facebook pages of "Made in Georgia" and Georgian business news programme.

Here is the copy of test report which shows that value of nitrates in our kiwifruit is about 5 times less than allowed and pesticides are so low that they are practically undetectable. We will keep doing these tests continuously, and focus on quality so that customers know they can trust our product.

Why Quality of Product is Important, Part 2: B2B

2010-03-01T23:28:00.023+04:00

As we do not sell directly to consumers, we cooperate with retailers and our retailers are very diverse: supermarket chains, small grocery shops, street fruit sellers, and a wide variation of those.

We had no idea who they were, what would attract them, how we could keep them happy. We believed that as our product was "first ever labeled, sorted, calibrated, ripeness measured, nicely packed Georgian fruit" our business customers would definitely like to try and offer it to their own customers. At the end of the day, retailers are supposed to buy whatever their customers like and we believed in the final consumer, we were doing everything having that ideal final consumer in mind and we were sure that final consumer would appreciate our work.

Then, on one frosty early morning, one of the fruit retailers told us something which actually defined what business academics call a customer value proposition: "I am buying your kiwifruit because" he took one piece of kiwifruit from the box, "your fruit is zero-loss category... every single piece of daily pack-out is sold, I did not have to dump any single of your fruits."

This means that a perfect product for consumer is also a perfect trading category for retailer, our business customer. We heard many times from other retailers more or less the same opinions about how profitable and convenient business with us is, and we became even more convinced in the prime importance of focus on product and the quality.

Photo: our kiwifruit on the desk of street fruit seller

We provided with POS promotion material

One can see the stark difference between our and other fruits

Nergeta kiwifruit on the shelf of Georgian supermarket

Contact me at:

Konstantine.Vekua@nergeta.ge

Why Quality of Product is Important, Part 1

2010-02-09T15:25:00.005+04:00

Many companies claim that they are consumer oriented but then when you look at their product, the quality and the user experience is not what you expected. We have an impression that firms, whose products are 80% good, try to engage in various PR, charity sponsorship, reality shows to "hide what's missing". We are not that sort of company and we rather invest in product improvement than in advertising of not yet perfect product.

let us clearly state what is consumer orientation for Nergeta: 100% through quality of product and quality of experience our product gives to each consumer. Let us give a simple example: if any consumer buys 100 pieces of our fruit anywhere in Georgia, any time in sales season(weather in January, March or May), every single fruit should be without defects and no consumer should have reason to say that out of 100 fruits even one of them was different.

This is what we do to achieve such 100% satisfaction: every single kiwifruit, before shipping to the market, is hand checked by our resorting unit at the pack house. So, we sort kiwifruit twice: once, when we buy it from growers and then again before selling it. Between buying and selling there are numerous operations which consist of many nuances and our employees are taught how to take care of them. As an example, our employees do not throw kiwifruit into carton boxes on a sorting table, they put them gently with labeled side faced up.

Then, we just do not ship to market the fruit which does not have minimum 12% of sugar and maximum hardness of 2kgf. These two parameters make our consumer experience easy and tasty: cutting and slicing kiwifruit with less than 2kgf is easy and serving it with minimum sugar content of 12% is enjoyable.

We place so much importance on the quality because we think that nothing can be more assuring for our survival and profitability than hundreds of thousands of consumers who believe in our quality "even without any advertisement".

Contact me at:

Konstantine.Vekua@nergeta.ge

Experience of Supply Chain | First Lessons

2009-12-06T15:26:00.008+04:00

As we built a coolstore and already do actual business for more than a month, we would like to share some of our experiences and opinions about the following challenges:

1) start-up stage
2) operational stage

1) Challenges at the start-up stage

Anyone who wants to start a business in Georgia in the sector of fruit and vegetables will face following problems: a) lack of local expertise in modern methods of fruit storage and processing, b) absence of local supplies of critical building materials and equipment.

We would like to give an example of Italy. Italy is a great place to get all kinds of fruit storage and proccessing technologies and the reason is that they have advanced fruit and vegetable sector clustered in different regions. This remindes us of Michael Porter's point that hundreds of regionally concentrated businesses cause sophistication of that particular sector as well as that of their servicing and supplying industries. If we analyse Georgia in this regard, we can easily conclude that because fruit and vegetables sector is not developed, this results in a scarce supply of storage experts, absence of local fruit processing equipment and many other inhibiting factors.

We hope that our own company and other newly started fruit and vegetables companies will create demand for local expertise and that we can get carton boxes, stickers and other stuff from Georgian manufacturers. For this reason we were glad to learn that isothermal panels production was started in Georgia but were unhappy to learn that their prices were more expensive than imported panels. So, some of most critical inputs are either unavailable locally or if available, come at higher costs.

2) Challenges at the operational stage

If problems outlined above can be solved by buying expertise and equipment overseas, problems at operational stage are not solved easily and these challanges will remain for very long time and cause many companies to become uncompetitive and they either have to go upstream which means buying own land and investing in development or they have to survive on very low turnover and accept that they cannot grow.

What we want to talk about is very inefficient supply base: Georgian small growers' efficiency is very low and this means: lower yield of 1st class/export class fruit and higher cost per unit of final ready product. While unlike their European collegues Georgian growers do produce high quality and bigger size kiwifruit without any usage of biostimulants, amount of this type of export class fruit in their total yields is not more than 50%. This means that only 50% of their product is worth exporting/selling and the rest cannot be sold.

What are the reasons? To our observation, there is following main reason: lack of modern kiwifruit (fruit in general) orchard management skills. Thanks to extensive research of scientific institutes and growers themselves, growers in New Zealand have very high yields per hectare and have most of harvest within 1st class. So, there, knowledge is provided and it is also used by their growers. In our country, regretably, we do not hear much about real field trials of different soil management or pruning styles.

Many people in Georgia argue that small sizes of Georgian orchards is the main reason. We only partially agree to this because there are some bigger size orchards and plantations but they are not managed professionally and as a result do not produce larger volumes of export class crop. While there are just couple of kiwifruit orchards with the size of 1ha, there are many hazelnut orchards with 5, 10 and even 100ha but their productivity per 1ha is half or even less of what it should be and this is very strong evidence of improper management which is mostly due to owners' failure to apprecieate modern orchard management concepts.

Actually Georgian hazelnut industry is a good example of inefficiency: top 5 or 6 factories can process all the hazelnut produced by whole of Georgia but in fact there are 50 or so small, medium and large factories and we hear every year that some new guy is entering the market further fragmenting the industry. As a result growers have no problem to sell their crop at high prices and have no incentives to improve their quality and productivity.

More on these subjects in subsequent posts as well. If you found this relevant and of interest, please leave a note or comment.

Contact me at:
Konstantine.Vekua@nergeta.ge

How we Built a Coolstore

2009-11-06T14:01:00.002+04:00

You must have a coolstore to be able to store fruits beyond their season. The challenge is to store them in such a way that fruit does not lose its flavor and healthy features, as well as its appearance. In our case an additional problem was lack of local expertise in modern storage methods and we had to find it in foreign country.

So, we started by looking on the web and luckily we found plenty of advice, even sample drawings and photos. For storage methods of kiwifruit we received advice from one of the world's most reputable scientist in this field, from New Zealand. In about one month we had the idea of building and asked professional architectural and design bureau in Tbilisi to prepare a project which was ready in another 20 days. Meanwhile we were looking for refrigerating equipment, isothermal doors and panels which we bought in Italy. 20-30 years ago most of coolstores only had cooling equipments but we learned that for longer storage one of the "new" things is an ethylene scrubber: equipment which takes air from the coldroom, carries it to special chamber, removes all the ethylene and returns air to room.

What is ethylene? This is a gas which almost every fruit emits and this gas can accelerate fruit softening and make it unmarketable. We decided to get one, also from Italy.

Construction and installation itself went quite well and we got a building permit from government about 30 days after application and then it took another 40 days or so to build and install structures, panels, doors and cooling equipment. So in total it took about 4 months and we had ready coolstore.

Here are some of photos taken during our construction works

Starting our blog

2009-10-03T18:09:00.000+04:00

We believe that by giving you regular updates, we can demonstrate our real commitment to producing quality fruit.

Over the next few months we will be adding regular posts on our progress, and what we are learning in the process. It will take some time before this blog has the relevant depth, but stand by as we are bringing you updates. Like our fruits themselves, this blog will take some time to grow. But we are sure that it will deliver – and demonstrate that you can expect consistent quality from Nergeta.