From Satkhira to UK supermarkets

Consumers in the United Kingdom will be able to buy Bangladesh-grown soft and juicy fleshed mangoes from their neighbourhood supermarkets from this Monday.

Some of the best quality mangoes grown in Satkhira are set to enter the European supermarkets, for the first time, with an Emirates flight ferrying the first consignment from Dhaka to London tomorrow.

Officials at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Horticulture Export Development Foundation (Hortex Foundation) have confirmed export of mangoes from Bangladesh for the British supermarket chain, Asda. 

Asda, a subsidiary of the American retail company Walmart, is the United Kingdom's second-largest chain by market share.

Asda is procuring the mangoes through one of its subsidiaries - the International Procurement Logistic (IPL) - from Dip International, a Dhaka-based exporter of fresh agro products.

Dip International's Manager Dipok K Das told The Daily Star that they have been catering to ethnic niche markets in the UK but this is for the first time mangoes from Bangladesh are going to enter the European supermarkets.

They're expecting a floor price of 3.7 pound per kilogram for Himsagar (a mango variety) and if things go as envisaged, the total export volume may hit 80 metric tonnes by the end of the current mango season, said Das.

Dr Md Saleh Ahmed, senior value chain expert of the Hortex Foundation, told The Daily Star that in league with FAO, Hortex trained 500 farmers (tomato, brinjal, and potato and mango growers) so that they could know the agricultural best practices and become conscious and judicious about pesticide applications and other food safety aspects.

"A hundred and 80 of them are mango farmers from seven districts having concentrations of mango orchards," he said.

Dr Ahmed added, "First shipment of 500 boxes of mangoes (weighing in total 625 kilograms) will be exported on Sunday (May 17) and the second consignment of over two metric tonnes of mangoes will be dispatched in the following week. These two, you can say, are trial shipments. Then things will roll faster and on regular basis."

With an annual mango output of around one million metric tonnes, Bangladesh is the 8th largest producer of the juicy fruit in the world. 

FAO Representative in Bangladesh, Mike Robson, expressed excitement at the entry of Satkhira mangoes to British supermarkets.

It's coming of age that mangoes from Bangladesh are fulfilling European food standards, said Mike.

Bangladesh's own state-of-the-art food safety laboratory carrying out the pre-export tests is also a testimony that people are becoming more conscious about safe food, said Mike, a British national.

Golam Mostafa is one of the first few farmers in Satkhira from whom the mangoes are being sourced for the first lot of the export consignment.

"I'll provide them five tonnes of Himsagar. These will be of good quality and four to five mangoes would weigh one kilogram. We're selling mangoes in the local market at Tk 55 per kg and hoping to get premium prices from the export market," said Mostafa.

Experts pointed out that though the UK is the destination of over 40 percent of Bangladesh's horticultural export, it has been mainly confined in the low-price ethnic markets as the upstream markets (chain shops) did not allow Bangladeshi fresh products due to non-compliance of market access requirements.

With the UN FAO providing support to Hortex Foundation, many farmers and value chain actors got the necessary training on best agricultural practices and with that they started exploring the high value export markets.

In early 2014 the FAO Food Safety Team initiated contact with Asda. Asda was interested in procuring mango from Bangladesh as it was already popular, being sold through the stores of the large Bangladeshi expatriate community in UK. An additional advantage is that some Bangladeshi mango varieties mature early in the season and therefore could be sold to UK consumers before other varieties from competitor countries are made available.

Asda assigned its subsidiary IPL to communicate with FAO and secure safety-assured quality mangoes from Bangladesh.

In the last mango season, Hortex, FAO and the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) arranged field visits of UK experts in three mango-growing areas -- Satkhira, Chapainawabganj and Rajshahi -- and made a sample shipment of nine mango varieties to the IPL. Later, Walmart showed interest in importing three varieties -- Himsagar, Langra and Amrapali.

On May 11, mango samples collected from Satkhira groves were sent to the National Food Safety Laboratory at the Institute of Public Health (IPH) and on Thursday the lab gave test results clearing the consignment for export.

 Dip International's Manager Dipok K Das said they're starting with Himsagar but later on they would also export Langra and Amrapali.