Azernews.Az

By Amina Nazarli

One of Kazakhstan’s largest confectioneries manufacturers with a 70-year history in in the country, “Rakhat” confectionery, intends to resume exports to Azerbaijan, according to a statement made by the company’s Deputy Director of Export Development, Yevgeny Kondrat, at the Azerbaijani-Kazakh Business Forum in Baku on October 20.

Earlier, the confectionary had been supplying products to Azerbaijan, but two years ago the deliveries stopped.

“We believe that the Azerbaijani market is very promising, and the consumption of confectionery products is very high,” said Kondrat. “We see how your market is growing, and we think that we can also take our place here.”

The company representative said that talks on the resumption of deliveries to distribution companies and trade networks in Azerbaijan have been already held.

He went on adding that Rakhat previously supplied products to CIS countries, China, Mongolia, Germany, and now plans to enter markets in Pakistan, India, Vietnam, and others.

Today, the company produces more than 300 products such as wafers, cookies, a zephyr, chocolate, fruit jelly, cocoa, and of course, candies.

Azerbaijan, famous for its traditional sweets and adoration of candies is engaged both in the export and import of chocolate.

State Customs Committee statistics show that in Azerbaijan, the volume of exported chocolate products exceeds those imported and in the first quarter of this year, the country exported some 975.6 tons of chocolate products worth about $2.9 million to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, Russia, Iraq, Mongolia and others. Whereas, during this period Azerbaijan imported 8,100 tons of chocolate from Europe, Russia, Ukraine and other countries.

The main producers of chocolate products in Azerbaijan are "Ulduz" and "Shirin" confectioneries.

The launch of confectioneries with the most modern equipment in 2000s, have given a powerful impetus to the development of the confectionery and food products in the country.

The consumption of chocolate products in Azerbaijan topped 24,600 tons in the first quarter of this year.

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz