TRANSESTONIA 2012 focused on the marketing of the food products distribution centre

In addition to the transport and logistics companies, the 8th international transit conference TRANSESTONIA 2012: The Food Hub hosted international guests from the food industry and export businesses. This year the conference focused on an activity that has remained essential for Estonian transit for many centuries - the logistics of and value adding to food products. As stated by Mr. Illimar Paul, the Development Manager of the Estonian Logistics Cluster, an Estonia-based food products distribution centre would allow for a centralised access to the market of 300 million consumers in the Baltic States, Finland, Sweden, Russia, CIS, Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Eastern Europe. "A central warehouse located in Estonia would increase the competitiveness in the aforesaid markets for the producers located at far away places like Asia, Africa or Americas,” explained Mr. Paul.

The special guest at the conference, the Indian ambassador residing in Finland, His Excellency Mr. Aladiyan Manickam presented the current status of India’s food products export to Russia and Estonia’s possible role in it. The trade between India and Russia has intensified yearly, increasing from 2.7 billion dollars in 2005 to 8.9 billion dollars in 2011. The main food product items exported from India to Russia are the frozen meats, Basmati rice, Guar gum, and pureed mango. The Indian products shipped currently through Estonia as transit goods are in the main part canned food products, construction materials, and textile products. The Ambassador Manickam suggested that Estonia would make a suitable distribution centre for all food products shipped from India to Russia.

The seven member delegation of the Hull city government lead by Lord Mayor Danny Brown also took interest in the food products export to Russia. Hull region has the highest density of food industries in the Great Britain, where about a total of 48,000 people are employed by approximately 500 food industry enterprises. The partnership between the Hull region and Estonia is closely tied to the European highway E20 project interconnecting several wealthiest cities and industrial regions in the Northern Europe. The Great Britain leader of the project Mr. Martin Venning believes that the local governments and companies in the regions the highway E20 is passing through have a common strategy to boost the trade between the European Union countries and Russia. “Estonia’s location and business climate are strategically suitable for developing a food products distribution centre. In the framework of this project, we would consider Estonia as a potential gateway to the Russian market,” Mr. Venning revealed.

In his presentation at the conference, Mr. Dmitri Kamyshnikov, a member of the management board of Transfood Eurasia, considered Estonia's potential to develop into a Nordic distribution centre for e.g. cooking oils to be very good. Mr. Kamyshnikov shared his vision of Estonia as the Nordic distribution centre for cooking oils in detail - as the region currently lacks a respective distribution centre, then after long consideration of various regions and harbours, he deems Estonia to be the best location for it. "The reasons behind such strategic choice of location are the advantages of the Muuga Harbour: the access to intermodal transport, the harbour depth and year-round navigability as well as the availability of undeveloped land,” Mr. Kamyshnikov explained.

PRESENTATIONS of the conference find HERE

Gallery of the conference find HERE