Azerbaijan, Baku, 3 April / Trend corr I. Khalilova/ With the initiative of Azerbaijan Export and Investment Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO) and Azerbaijan Investment Company (AIC) the juice manufacturers in Azerbaijan will be offered to establish the Fruit Corporation, the Director of the Export Promotion Department at AZPROMO Emil Aliyev said on 3 April. Presentation of the idea will be held on 9 April. At the presentation ceremony, all juice makers, both the members of juice exporters' alliance and companies not included in the alliance will be offered to join the memorandum.
According to Aliyev, the organization may be the first in the CIS. It will represent the domestic juice makers in the foreign markets; assist in bringing the production closer to the international standards and in exporting the products under the unified brand.
Aliyev did not rule out that the domestic juice manufacturers will merge into Fruit Corporation with unified export brand.
"Concentration of attention on the unified brand will improve the quality of production and will stabilize export of juices to foreign markets," Aliyev said.
The share of each company in authorized capital of the corporation will correspond with the scale of its business in the local market. For the time being, there are 13 large-scale and middle scale producers and 40 small-scale manufacturers in the country. Given the high profitability of juice production, almost all caning meat and milk enterprises in the country also produce juices.
Establishment of the Corporation will not affect continuation of the alliance's operation because it is intended for solving the manufacturers' problems mainly in the domestic market, while the Fruit Corporation will promote export potential. Moreover, the Corporation will cover wide range of issues.
It is not ruled out that foreign investors may be drawn into development of the juice market in the future.
The key problems of the domestic juice manufacturers are regarding management, marketing and quality control, but there is no technological problem because Azerbaijan has model concentrated production. Azerbaijan's juice producers began purchasing manufacturing lines 7-8 years ago. That means that many Azerbaijani manufacturing lines technologically overpass the ones in Turkey and Germany, as the manufacturers in these countries purchased the lines 20 years ago and have been upgrading them. AZPROMO expects drastic changes in this field by the end of 2008.
The Alliance of Juice Exporters unities Milk-PRO, Gilan, SAF, Granet Haji, Gamalhan, Miri-Pak, Navai, etc.
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