Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 2
By Anvar Mammadov – Trend:
Viticulture sphere in Azerbaijan has great scope and potential, Elchin Madatov, head of the Wine Exporters’ and Producers’ Association of the country, told Trend.
Madatov said that this sphere was historically developed in Azerbaijan, and the conditions created in the country nowadays allow to gain back the lost positions.
“Modern grape processing plants were constructed in Azerbaijan over the past 10-15 years, technical equipment of which allows them to compete even with the leading European facilities, as this sphere was given special attention by the government, and a lot of investment was attracted,” Madatov added.
“In addition, the area under grape crops has significantly increased in Azerbaijan in recent years,” he noted. “Thanks to this, nowadays Azerbaijan’s potential, that is, the technical indicators of the plant, as well as the amount of raw material, allow it to produce annually about 100 million bottles of wine.”
However, due to several reasons, Azerbaijan still cannot reach such production volumes, Madatov said.
“Russia and China are currently our main markets. The Chinese market is fairly new for us - Azerbaijani products entered the Chinese market just about a year ago, and the dynamics is good enough there.”
“The situation is much more complicated in the Russian market, because of the very high competition by global producers of alcohol aimed at this market,” he added. “In particular, we are actively competing with the Georgian and Armenian producers. Therefore, we believe that the Azerbaijani wine production needs government support as it is difficult for individual Azerbaijani producers to promote their goods on the Russian market.”
Madatov noted that specific work is already underway in this direction – export missions are organized, the Azerbaijani government provides an opportunity for manufacturers to participate in exhibitions and promote their products.
“For the last three months we have visited China, Belarus and Germany, where we actively advertised Azerbaijani products,” Madatov added. “I would like to note that this is already bearing fruit. We already have requests from Belarus, and I believe that this year the Azerbaijani wine and cognac will return to the Belarusian market.”
“There is also great interest for our products in Europe, but this market is new for us, and we have to promote our products,” he said. “Of course, our products are exported to the European market, but the export volume is low, and it’s necessary to continue advertising and promotion of Azerbaijani wine in Europe.”
Madatov noted that the main purpose of wine producers in Azerbaijan will be the expansion of the scope of wine export in the near future.