Revenues earned from hazelnut exports totals to USD 84.5 million, the export volume is up by 4 thousand tone compared to the previous year, while revenues – by 8.3 million.
According to the official statistics of the National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat), one of the largest hazelnut exporting company is LLC Georgian Hazelnut Corporation, located in Guria. As the head of the company declares, hazelnuts of 500 t have been exported in total last year. According to him, the company does not hold hazelnut plantations and buys products from the farmers.
"It was a very successful year. Our main markets are the EU and Gulf countries [Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar]. In the case of our company, we tripled our exports last year compared to 2020. Our head office is located in Guria, but in some cases we also export nuts from different regions of Georgia. We think we will be able to export up to 1,000 tons of hazelnuts by next season [May-June]," said Teimuraz Gogia, CEO of Georgian Hazelnut Corporation.
According to him, high quality hazelnut is the main challenge for the sector at this stage.
“Tortoise beetle unfortunately is still a challenge. Another problem is that we still do not know how to grow hazelnut culture and we almost do not have large farms in the country. Everything has become very expensive, including poisonous chemicals, which farmers cannot afford it any longer and they ate gradually losing their interest.
The state has provided very good assistance to both us and the farmers against tortoise beetle for two years. Unfortunately, this pace has slowed down a bit and the sector is not getting much attention.
If this situation is continued for the next year, farmers will not be able to use poisonous chemicals and it would be very difficult for us. We will return 3 years back, when we had very low-quality hazelnuts”, -said Teimuraz Gogia, CEO of Georgian Hazelnut Corporation.
