Belgian fruit & vegetables to head on train trail to Kazakhstan

Fresh Trade Belgium, the Belgian professional federation for fruit & vegetable importers, exporters and wholesalers, have many plans for the new year. Veerle Van der Sypt, secretary of the federation gives us an update on his latest project. "We are busy with different areas such as Russia, Transpharma Express, CSR and Innovation. We have made a little progress in Russia, and found a way around the MRL's. Fruit & Vegetable export runs very slowly due to differences in rules and regulations so a way to harmonise this was crucial. Since December we have managed to overcome some boundaries which is positive for the fruit & vegetable trade."

Transpharma Express
At the end of 2011 the local development council of Antwerp, together with Belgian customs and Antwerp's port authority finalised a plan to provide a transcontinental goods connection between Antwerp and Chongging, China. Straight away questions came from the market asking if conditioned goods could be transported. "We are working with both the fresh and processed food industry and pharmaceutical companies. Products would be transported from Antwerp through Russia with China being the end destination. The train connection existed, just not for conditioned transport. We can now effectively cool products during transport using suitable temperature controlled containers. At the end of January there will be a test run to Kazakhstan to see if this is feasible, and then the decision will be made to see if the new transport connection can continue. A huge amount of preparation has been made and the project is in its advanced stage. We are going to be watching this test run and the future possibilities it could bring for the fruit and vegetable sector. During the test run there will be 'worst-case-scenarios' with the intention to test as many situations as possible."

CSR and innovation
Veerle explained earlier about a CSR project which FVPhouse was working on together with the federations Fresh Trade Belgium and Belgapom. This happened in collaboration with UNIZO, the organisation for the self employed and SME's. "We were actively engaged in the design of a sustainable sector passport which is complete and will be operational by the three companies in the first six months of this year. The innovation academy's project is also running smoothly. We want to know how innovative our sector is. On the 3rd of February there will be another seminar about the initiative. Around 15 companies will be given the chance to attend the 'innovation academy'. These will obviously be companies who wish to focus on innovation."

For more information:
Fresh Trade Belgium
Sint-Annaplein 3
9290 Berlare - België
Tel. +32 (0)9 339.12.52
Fax : +32 (0)9 339.12.51
www.freshtradebelgium.be