Fresh Retail Buying Mission

Fresh Retail Buying Mission

I’m Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

July 22nd and 23rd the Washington State Department of Agriculture in cooperation with the Western U.S. Agricultural Trade Association will be hosting a delegation of buyers from Southeast Asia to showcase Washington fresh fruit and vegetable items. WSDA International Trade Specialist, Rebecca Weber, talks about the visits main objective.

WEBER: Really the focus is to try to connect our Washington suppliers with the importer/distributors from the Southeast Asia market, and to help to build those relationships. For the most part it will be new relationship development. There’s a few folks who have met previously and the focus there will be to try to expand that business.

Weber says that the group’s interest covers a wide variety of Washington fresh produce.

WEBER: We’ll be introducing a few new products, and then really focusing on getting information about this year’s crop for the different products. The main focus will be apples, cherries, pears, stone fruits, and then we have three buyers who are looking at vegetables - potatoes, onions, and then a few other specialty things.

Growers can meet one on one or host a visit for the Southeast Asia buyers.

WEBER: We’re going to visit Monson Fruit in Selah and Evans Fruit in Yakima. They’ll have a chance to see the packing line and see how the fruit is handled, see partly how it’s looking this year. But, really understanding the process of identifying different levels of quality - seeing how things are packed for export, seeing the food safety aspect of that whole process.

The countries represented in this group, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, aggregated together are the third largest market for Washington state food and agricultural exports.

I’m Lacy Gray and that’s Washington Ag Today on the Ag Information Network.