FESCO delivers first shipment of bananas from India for X5

MOSCOW. March 14 (Interfax) - The FESCO transport group (whose parent company is PJSC Far Eastern Shipping Company ) delivered its first shipment of bananas from India to the port of Novorossiysk, the company said.

The customer for the shipment was X5 Import (part of the X5 Group), FESCO said.

A shipment of bananas weighing 22 tonnes (over 1,500 boxes) at an exporter's warehouse in the Indian state of Maharashtra was loaded into a forty-foot Dalreftrans (part of FESCO) refrigerated container and delivered to the Nava Sheva port in Mumbai. There, the container was placed on the group's vessel, which departed for Russia on February 18 as part of the regular maritime service of FESCO Indian LineWest. The container ship docked at the port of Novorossiysk on March 13, FESCO said.

After passing the necessary customs and quarantine procedures, the refrigerated container with bananas will be delivered by truck to the customer's warehouse, the company said. FESCO shipped the next batch of bananas from India to Novorossiysk on March 12.

FESCO is discussing shipments of bananas from Vietnam and India instead of Ecuador with retail chains, Andrey Severilov, Chairman of the FESCO Board of Directors, said in February.

As reported, in early February, Rosselkhoznadzor appealed to the Ecuadorian Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock with a request to suspend certification of bananas from five Ecuadorian exporting enterprises starting February 5 due to the systematic detection of a quarantine object considered dangerous for Russia and the EAEU countries, the polyphagous humpback fly, in the products. After this, there were negotiations during which the parties discussed the conditions for renewing certification. As a result, Ecuador increased the number of inspections of bananas sent to Russia from the five enterprises that violated Russia and EAEU phytosanitary requirements, and also built a special quarantine zone for loading bananas from plantations. Meanwhile, Rosselkhoznadzor has been working several years on organizing banana supplies from India.

The FESCO transport group owns assets in the port, railway and integrated logistics business. FESCO owns the Commercial Port of Vladivostok , intermodal operator Fesco Integrated Transport, and the Dalreftrans operator of refrigerated containers, as well as the Transgarant and Fesco Trans. The group operates terminal complexes in Novosibirsk, Khabarovsk, Tomsk and Vladivostok. The company manages a container fleet of more than 170 thousand TEU, and over 11 thousand fitting platform wagons. The group's fleet consists of 37 vessels, which operate primarily on the company's own shipping lines.