Mahindra ShubhLaabh Services starts sourcing grapes from Egypt for supply to Europe.

NEW DELHI: Mahindra ShubhLaabh Services, the agribusiness unit of automotive to information technology Mahindra Group, has started procuring grapes from Egypt, because it allows the company to supply the fruit in the European market even when it is offseason in India. Besides, the strategic location of the transcontinental nation keeps the cost of logistics low, said Ashok Sharma, chief executive of agri and allied business at Mahindra.

Mahindra ShubhLaabh is the largest grapefruit exporter from India and it sources most of it from producers here. The company has a target to export 850 containers, or 10,000 tonnes of the berry sourced from India to Europe, its key market, in calendar 2014. That will be a fivefold volume growth in its nine years of operations. It plans to procure another 600 tonnes from Egypt this year and scale up that to 2,500 tonnes in the next two years.

Mahindra ShubhLaabh sources some of the fruits it sells in India from abroad. But, this is the first that time it has opted for an overseas destination to meet the commitments of its global supply-chain network. The company expects the move to gradually help it become a round-the-year supplier of fresh grapes globally.

Source : economictimes.indiatimes.com