Nagpur: After exporting oranges to Dubai by air last year, woman entrepreneur from city, Sonali Loharikar , on Tuesday sent as much as 10 tonnes of oranges and 10 tonnes of pomegranates to Oman from Mumbai by ship. All the oranges were procured from the farm of Dhiraj Junghare from Hatla village near Katol in Nagpur district.If the consignment reaches Oman in good quality after the five days travel, Loharikar plans to send another five containers to Oman this month itself due to high demand from there. In fact, the demand is so much that an Oman trader has made advance payment to her and is ready to bear the losses, if any, during shipment.“We have taken all the care and followed all the procedural requirements of pre-cooling, cold-storage, waxing and temperature control to maintain the quality of the fruit from the time of dispatch to the time of delivery. After sorting and grading, the oranges were transported in a truck to Mumbai from Katol. Then, they were processed there by pre-cooling and waxing. The fruits were kept at 8 degrees Celsius for 24 hours before shipping. The temperature of the container during travel will be maintained at 8 degrees Celsius,” said Loharikar.Loharikar and her business partner Nitesh Murudkar run a firm, SDF Productions Pvt Ltd, which is into export of other crop produces like vegetables and turmeric etc. This year, she also plans to add lemon to the other fruits and vegetables.The fruits were harvested green from Junghare’s farm and were sent in simple crates to Mumbai. After processing, they were packed in the Maha Orange corrugated boxes and put on the container. The pomegranate was procured from near Shirdi.Junghare, who has the largest orange orchard in Vidarbha, said he had selected best quality big oranges for the export. “They were so big that six oranges together would weigh one kilogram,” he said.Earlier, in November 2015, Maha Orange had sent a 23-tonne container to Sri Lanka successfully after a lot of trials on maintaining temperature and processing. But, so far, there has been no consistency in export by either private exporters or government agencies.This year, Maha Orange is planning of export of the ambia bahar crop in winter as it is expected to be a bumper crop. Maha Orange director Shridhar Thakre confirmed this to TOI.

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