Baku, Azerbaijan, March 1
By Fakhri Vakilov - Trend:
British American Tobacco Uzbekistan and the Swiss company New Product International signed an agreement to establish a foreign enterprise for processing and exporting dried vegetables, fruits and herbs, Trend reports via Uzbek media.
The agreement was signed during the 24th session of Uzbek-British Council on Trade and Industry in Tashkent. New Product International is the main owner of the Uzbek-Swiss company Samfruit (Samarkand region).
The agreement was signed by Area Director in Ukraine, Caucasus, Central Asia & Belarus at British American Tobacco Simon Welford and Samfruit CEO Denis Samarin.
BATU will be part of the co-founders of Samfruit and intends to invest $11 million in the first stage to expand production capacity, purchase modern high-tech equipment for freeze-drying and air-drying, packaging, for the production of export-oriented products.
Investments will help to expand production capacity of the enterprise from 700 to 4,000 tons of dried fruits, vegetables and herbs per year.
Upon completion of the implementation of the first stage of investment program, the projected export revenue of Samfruit should increase several times.
This is the first investment project of the British American Tobacco group in the post-Soviet space, not related to the production and sale of tobacco and nicotine-containing products.
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