Naza Agro seeks export opportunities of Premium Pineapple to China
KUALA LUMPUR, 23rd August 2018 – Naza Agro, the agro business arm of the Naza Group of Companies, participated in the inaugural Malaysian Pineapple Business to Business (B2B) Promotion initiative held at Walmart Beijing, China, as part of a delegation initiated by the Malaysian Pineapple Industry Board (MPIB). The delegation, led by the Minister of Agriculture and Agro-Industry Malaysia, Dato’ Salahuddin Ayub, aims to introduce Malaysia-produced pineapples and its unique traits to the Chinese consumer market.
The event provided an insight into the unique Malaysian pineapples through suppliers such as Naza Agro through their trademark brand Tropicale, and also marks the first batch of Malaysian pineapples to arrive in Walmart Hypermarket in Beijing. In the long run, it is also hoped that this initiative will foster a dynamic business relationship between Malaysia and China.
In the near future, Naza Agro’s long-term vision is to establish a strong presence in the China market and continue to explore other export markets such as Japan, Korea and the Middle East for their tropical fruits business. Plans are also in the pipeline to expand their tropical fruits plantation land bank by another 2,000 acres which includes planting of pineapple, melon and durian for export market within five years’ time.
Naza Agro was established in 2014 as the agro business arm of the Naza Group and is involved in the production of tropical fruits using high technology agro systems with cutting-edge biotechnology, green house fertigation system, biofertilisers and commercial farming methods. Naza Agro now owns and manages 2,277 acres of sprawling plantations located in Pahang, Perak, Perlis and Negeri Sembilan, producing premium MD2 pineapples under their trademark Tropicale brand for local distribution and export.
Pineapples sourced from Malaysia are known for their natural sweet taste and aroma, juiciness and crunchy texture with high fiber content. Malaysia’s tropical weather creates the perfect conditions for pineapples plantations to thrive, and hence consumers appreciate the year-round supply of fresh, juicy pineapples such as Tropicale’s premium MD2 pineapples.
Malaysian pineapples made a breakthrough in year 2017 when they were first exported to China. To date, a total of 202 tonnes of Malaysian fresh pineapples valued at RM1.5 million have been successfully exported to China. This, together with the growing demand in China for Malaysian pineapples, signify a massive export potential for Malaysian pineapple suppliers where Malaysia targets RM320 million in export value with the total output of 700,000 tonnes of pineapples in year 2020.
