The sour taste in Utkarsh Wagh’s mouth has nothing to do with the quality of his grapes. For this grape exporter from Nashik, the dourness stems from St Petersburg, Russia. On January 24 this year, Wagh received a missive from one of his Russian importers, asking him to cancel all grape consignments after January 27. The letter came after a ban on the import of Indian plant products beginning January 28 because of an insect found in one of the containers—and following a similar ban on rice and sesame seeds since March last year.“I had no idea about the ban. It was very sudden and unexpected,” says Wagh, whose P&A Exports Pvt Ltd has been dealing with the Russian market for over four years. “This year, the grape season has been good and I was looking forward to exploring the market in Russia. We have already sent five consignments since November and were expected to send another 15 in the next few weeks,” he said. “The last ship to Russia was to leave on January 25 and we still had to pack the grapes. The notice period was too short and we lost the consignments,” he said.Wagh—who received the consignment order in November last year and was looking forward to a Rs 1 crore profit this year—is not alone in his misery. The ban has hit Nashik’s grape and pomegranate producers who were gearing up to export the produce to Russia—an unexplored market for grapes—from January to April. After wooing the European and American markets over the years, Nashik had zeroed in on a business of around 25 consignments. Each consignment comprises around 15 metric tons and costs between Rs 10-15 lakh for grapes and up to Rs 20 lakh for pomegranates.“For Nashik, even the estimated loss of Rs 5 crore is considerable due to the ban. Now exporters will have to start from scratch for deals in other markets, and this may result in delay and subsequently affect the table-top produce,” says Agricultural Officer Dhananjay Wardekar, also the signatory authority of Directorate of Plant Protection, Quarantine and Storage, Nashik. Earlier, the Russian Agricultural Inspection team had detected a Khapra beetle in the sesame shipment from India, which eventually resulted in a blanket ban on plant produce. This, despite the presence of a phyto-sanitary certificate issued by the Plant Quarantine Organisation. “There is no question of detecting a Khapra beetle in grapes and pomegranates as these are perishable goods,” said Wardekar, adding that stringent quality checks were followed for grapes. Speaking to The Indian Express from Delhi, Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority’s (APEDA) assistant general manager Vinod Kaul said that the Ministry of Commerce was communicating with the Russian authorities in India. “The ban is not justified. Even if it is assumed that there was an insect in a consignment of sesame seeds, it does not call for a ban on all products,” he said.Freshtrop Fruits Limited is another company that exported grapes and pomegranates to Russia. “It was a new market with great potential and we had settled with our exports. The ban will mean starting from scratch to win the deals from importers,” said General Manager Mahen Tandon, adding that the deal with the Russian importers comprised around 20 consignments of grapes.
