Graduate of "Bolashak" is going to grow not only raspberries and strawberries, but also not very popular in Kazakhstan blueberries

Director of the company “Algabas Agri-Food” Nurlan APUSHEV is not just an entrepreneur with the experience, he has the appropriate education. The young people studied in Canada under the program "Bolashak", majoring in "Agricultural Economics". For the sixth year, he is engaged in "berry" business. In an interview to palata.kz Apushev told why it is profitable to grow blueberries and how domestic berries will be cheaper than the imported ones.

- Tell us about your business. What did you start with?

- The first position, with which I began trading, a Canadian cultivated cranberries. I exported it to other countries - Russia, Europe, little Asia and the Middle East. They were container shipments of approximately 23 tons.

In 2014, I registered the company in Kazakhstan “Algabas Agri-Food”. We started operate actively in July of last year. I brought in one container of cranberry, then gradually added other items. Now we have 11 kinds of frozen berries in our assortment, which we supply to the sector HoReCa.

Eventually I had the idea to grow berries myself. I want to substitute 11 items that we import by local berries. I have a dream I want the shelves of the shops to be dominated by the Kazakh products. In January 2016 we flew with a companion to South America to see in practice how to grow blueberries. This is a very interesting culture, which has great potential for export. 15 varieties of American selection, we have brought in Kazakhstan, we are now testing. We also brought 9 varieties of honeysuckle, 2 raspberry varieties.

Now about 60 km from Astana in the village of Damsa we grow strawberries on one hectare. Citizens come to us themselves and their families to collect it from the fields. In the West, it is a very popular destination, so called farms “Pick your on” – “Pick up yourself". Often, strawberries, which come to Astana, are from the southern regions. Shelf life of strawberries is 5 days. If it is transported, we get it on the 3rd day. That is no longer competitive. And people come to us and gather themselves freshest berries. At the same time we do not use pesticides. That is we produce what we can give to the children. Of course, there is the problem of pests, but we are trying to solve it without the help of chemicals.

- Your post on Facebook got a very large response. How did that affect the demand for your products?

- Yes, more than 5 thousand likes. After that, the phone was just ringing all the timw. Now we have 133 families standing in the queue to collect strawberries.

I wrote about the difficulties, and there were many. We brought saplings from Europe by plane, there were difficulties with customs clearance, quarantine service, etc. Then bedding, human resources ... We managed to overcome it, and now we are collecting the harvest. We will have berries until September, before the first frost. Now we now have 1 hectare, we are aware that this is not enough. We still have 5 hectares for the expansion, we plan to bed raspberries and strawberries there in the autumn.

- Why did you import strawberry seedlings from Europe? It grows here as well.

- Yield is important for us, that is, those varieties that produce several harvests. Now we are going to focus on blueberries as a promising crop. In fact, we will start a new industry in Kazakhstan. There is a very large economic potential. First of all, it is very tasty, and at the same time cost-effective. Now we are looking for land with suitable soil and a large area - at least 50 hectares of industrial plantations to plant blueberries.

- What is it cost-effectiveness?

- Today, the price of blueberries is about 40 USD per kilogram. It is simply unrealistic price. It is "gold", and few people can afford it. To bring it to the masses, it is necessary to bring the price down to 5 USD per kilogram, so that people can at least try it. That is, we need to reduce the price 8 times.

- Do you think that you can manage it?

- Yes. If we plant it in large quantities, then we can do it. We now sell strawberries  for 1000 tenge per kilogram, and in “GalMart” a kilogram of such strawberry costs 9 thousand tenge. It is very large, it is the American selection. Usually berries either look beautifully or taste good. And this berry is very tasty and beautiful, without GMOs.

- Usually people are afraid to buy such a beautiful large berries, they think that they have a plastic taste.

- People, who come to us are very satisfied. Especially with children, they can come to nature, breathe fresh air.

- So you have decided to focus on blueberries now?

- Strawberries and raspberries - it is primarily because they quickly begin to bear fruit and provide a rapid return on investment. And blueberries - it's a large-scale and long-term project. It begins to bear fruit on 3-4-th year. We do not have the financial ability to tie resources to return in 4 years, so we started with raspberries and strawberries.