Chinese Dried Fruit and Nut Buyer Trade Mission - South Georgia

In 2015, more than 3.6 million lbs of USA dried blueberries were shipped to China and Hong Kong.   Here is a photo of Chinese dried fruit and nut buyers who are traveling the USA on a USDA-FAS sponsored trade mission to Georgia and California.    The group stopped in Alma, Georgia, the blueberry capital of the state and saw blueberry production for the first time!  They were amazed at what they saw and this familiarity with our crop will help grow the business in the future.   Next stop -- California.

Source: US Customs  It takes 3.5 lbs of frozen or fresh blueberries to product one lb of dried-infused blueberry.  The dried 3.6 million lbs of dried blueberries to China utilized 12.6 million lbs of fresh and frozen blueberries!  (Note: much of the HK production ends up in Guangdong Province, China.

Here are some of the gentlemen to thank!

A special thanks to Kevin Eason (green shirt) of the Blueberry Warehouse in Alma who dropped everything on short notice to meet this group!  

None of the group of six had ever seen blueberry production.