The Republic of Moldova, among the world's largest exporters of dried plums
The Republic of Moldova is among the world's largest exporters of dried plums, ranking eighth last year. Dried fruits from our country are appreciated in Romania, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Italy, Kazakhstan, France and Morocco. Fruit producers say that our products are of very high quality.
Sergiu Manolov opened a dried plum processing business 11 years ago and started exporting from the very first year. The entrepreneur says that initially the processing was done manually, but now he has high-performance equipment.
"I started the business in 2014, but it all started a year earlier, by chance I found a market, the first year I was like an exporter, then we decided to build the hall, the ovens and in 2014 we started working", reported Sergiu Manolov.
Annually, Sergiu exports approximately 500 tons of dried fruits, 80% of which are plums. The entrepreneur says that the largest quantity reaches the United Arab Emirates and Poland. In the Republic of Moldova, the fruits are delivered only to chocolate manufacturers.
*"Initially, the main export market was the CIS countries, which consumed 70, 80% of all exports. After the CIS market has diminished, now we export to the United Arab Emirates, Poland, Romania, the USA. It is not the biggest difference in which region you export to, the quality must be good, if you want to have sales, it must be quality and the price must be competitive," explained the entrepreneur.
In the last two years, the export of dried plums has increased significantly, and this is largely due to modern processing technologies.
“First of all, this is related to the adjustment of producers to the requirements of target markets. The introduction of new modern technologies for processing drying products and the adjustment to packaging requirements, I mean packaging for the consumer”, said Alexandra Bîcu, marketing specialist of the Moldova Fruct Association.
In 2024, the Republic of Moldova ranked seventh in the plum export ranking, with about 10 thousand tons.
