Farmer Shafiqul Islam has set up a small cold store for mangoes in Bagha, Rajshahi. He built it on his own land with the support of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE). The store can hold 10 tonnes of mangoes.

Shafiqul lives in Koligram in Bagha upazila. He runs a business called Sadi Enterprise at Pakuria Bazar in Pakuria union, and his family are among the large mango growers in the upazila.

Shafiqul said that on 6 July the store was used for the first time to keep 9 tonnes of Amrapali, Lokna, Fazli and Arajam mangoes. On Sunday, 28 July, the mangoes were taken out and sent to Dhaka, with no damage. When mangoes are kept in a fridge the skin shrivels, he said, but that did not happen to the mangoes kept in the cold store.

There is a packaging house next to the cold store, he said. The mangoes taken out are sorted there, then packed and sent to different parts of the country.

Sadi Enterprise has been exporting mangoes since 2015 and has so far exported more than 200 tonnes to Europe. This year it exported four tonnes.

Upazila agriculture officer Shafiullah Sultan said Sadi Enterprise is a major mango producer and exporter in Rajshahi. To make exporting easier, the DAE built the cold store on their land at a cost of about Tk 27 lakh.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.