The aim of the Punjab Field Trials Project is to foster the penetration of the Indian market by agricultural machinery manufacturers in the Italian Emilia-Romagna Region, a project organized by the Emilia-Romagna Unioncamere, the region, FederUnacoma, the National Federation of Agricultural Machinery Manufacturers, and IICCI, the Indian-Italian Chambers of Commerce & Industry.
The plan is to provide Indian farming entrepreneurs, from big landowners to small farming consortiums, and government authorities with a full understanding of the immense range, adaptability, quality and great efficiency of the machinery and equipment for agriculture, the agri-industry and food processing manufactured in the Italian Emilia-Romagna Region. The Indian agri-food sector is expanding thanks to the acquisition of machinery with increasingly advanced technologies to limit waste in the logistics of production chains and refrigeration and increase the efficiency of production.
A suitable site for the field trials, thanks to the terrain and warehouses for storing the machinery, has been selected in Punjab and made available by the local government at the Punjab Agricultural University PAU in Ludhiana and agreement has been reached on the machinery and technologies to put to the tests.
The Emilia-Romagna manufacturers involved have shipped their machinery and equipment for the field trials demonstrations and will draw on local services and research partners.
The project, presented in November last year at the EIMA International exposition in Bologna, will get started with two days of field trials of agricultural machinery scheduled for March 15 and 16 on the PAU campus to coincide with the Kisan Mela agricultural fair organized by the university and expected to draw crowds of more than 300,000 visitors. The demonstrations will target the numerous Indian farmers in attendance for the sale of Italian machinery and promote the formation of partnerships and cooperation between Italian and Indian business enterprises.
The trials will be followed by business-to-business meetings with personalized agendas under the aegis of the Indian-Italian Chamber Of Commerce & Industry involving the single farming businesses taking part and potential Indian counterparts, importers, distributors, manufacturers of machinery and components and the like. A permanent demonstration center will be set up at the Punjab Agricultural University to lay the groundwork for technical collaboration, to include farm machinery training sessions for Indian technicians and machinery distributors involved in the field trials, to boost commercial penetration of the market.
The project will close with the arrival of the EIMA Agrimach India 2013 trade fair in New Delhi set for December 5 to 7, sponsored by FederUnacoma in cooperation with FICCI, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
Gian Carlo Muzzarelli, the Italian regional commissioner for productive activities, affirmed, “This initiative is especially significant because it exploits the synergies of other partners in the project, in Emilia-Romagna as well as in India. The Indian partners really wanted this initiative, which meets the real technological needs of Punjab businesspeople and the government, and this was made clear to us repeatedly. This is a great opportunity for the Emilia-Romagna companies which will certainly be capable of taking up thanks to the quality of our production of excellence in the field of agricultural mechanization.”
Massimo Goldoni, the president of FederUnacoma, the National Federation of Agricultural Machinery Manufacturers in the National Manufacturers Federation, Confindustria, commented, “Commercial and industrial cooperation with India is a priority for the internationalization policies of our enterprises because this subcontinent colossus has risen in recent years to become the world’s biggest market for agricultural mechanization. By now, the Indian market takes up 450,000 tractors annually, more than China, equal to three times the numbers for the entire European Union and five times those for the United States, to become an immense opportunity for our companies. But this market requires a well organized approach so for this reason our federation, acting in concert with the region, has developed a well organized strategy which calls for institutional relationships and trade fair and demonstration events and technical and scientific cooperation, also with universities and Indian agencies involved in research and training. In the field of agricultural mechanization, our objective is to achieve an Italian-Indian system.”
Alberto Zambianchi, the president of the Forlì-Cesena Chamber of Commerce in the Emilia-Romagna Region, declared, “The attention and initiatives the Chambers of Commerce system has been dedicating to the Republic of Indian since 2011 are the result of precise and well motivated choices because not only is this one of the biggest market on the planet but also because it turns out that Italian products are especially welcomed as regards design and image as well as quality. In this third year, again with the financial backing of the Emilia-Romagna Region, the focus will be on the agricultural mechanization production chain and on housing and building. This is a project for synergy with precise steps aimed at fostering stable commercial relations and lasting production partnerships between the enterprises in the region and their Indian counterparts. India is a country of opportunity, open to welcoming the initiatives Italy is prepared to propose at all levels.”
In the first two years of the Project India Zambianchi referred to, 120 businesses agreed to company profiling and checks by the Indian-Italian Chambers of Commerce & Industry and are now benefiting from ongoing specialized services. Among them, 35 have paid their own way to India for business meetings and another sixty enterprises in the region took part nearly one year ago in B2B meetings with Indian buyers on visit to the Italian region. This initiative will be repeated March 18 to 21 in Parma, Bologna and Forlì.
Source:
Ufficio Stampa FederUnacoma
Stampa Unioncamere Emilia-Romagna
