“This is the main meeting of our industry – that’s why I came to it. And other mushroom growers too,” says Oleg Pancheshenko, owner of a large Ukrainian farm Griko.
The Ukrainian Mushroom Days took place last week on Wednesday-Thursday, October 20-21 in Kiev in the congress hall of the Mercure Kyiv Congress. The event included an Exhibition, Conference and Gala Dinner.“You have gathered all the suppliers and consultants we need in one place. Do such exhibitions with us in Azerbaijan,” Sabina Robinson laughs on the second day. She came as part of a delegation of 4 people from the largest farm in Azerbaijan ZIRA MAHSUL MMC.
For the first time in its history, the Ukrainian Mushroom Days in brought together not only Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian farms – but delegations from the largest farms in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Moldova, becoming an industry event not only in Eastern Europe, but also in Central Asia.
The organizer of the event is the Informational Mushroom Agency UMDIS.
Exhibition-Conference has been held every two years since 2014. Founder and Head of the Organizing Committee – Maksym Yenchenko.
The IV International Exhibition-Conference Days of Ukrainian Mushroom Growing gathered 350 participants.
Despite the pandemic, the Days of Ukrainian Mushroom Growing in 2021 attracted participants from 20 countries: Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Poland, Netherlands, Italy, France, Romania, Ireland , United Kingdom, United States of America, United Arab Emirates, India.
55 exhibiting companies attended the Exhibition from 6 countries: suppliers of compost, casing layer, equipment, packaging, services, mushrooms and other companies in the industry. This time, all industry leaders from Holland, Poland and Italy, who supply equipment for the mushroom industry, were present at the exhibition in Ukraine with stands.
Visitors could touch the racks, loosening machines, containers, casing layer, see miniature models of machines.
As speakers, 27 industry experts made presentations on the state of the market, technology, sales, marketing and innovation.
The main focus of the program were two discussions in which mushroom growers asked live questions to the best US mushroom sales and promotion specialists (Mushroom Council and Monterey Mushrooms).
The first day ended with a Gala Dinner. Here, ballerinas are grew and picked mushrooms in a dance, a neon show went on when the lights were off, they held a charity auction, and they brought out a cake – a huge mushroom weighing 42 kilograms.
“At the exhibition, we sold all the space we could — even the aisles. This time, almost all European supplier companies that were invited to participate confirmed us. The largest farms in other Russian-speaking countries were registered without invitations. What are the quarantines and difficulties with flights? In Ukraine, the UMDIS agency gathered 20 countries for the branch mushroom exhibition. This is partly the trust in us as organizers – but it says a lot. That our market becomes really important when viewed from the outside,” says the Director of the Mushroom Information Agency UMDIS.
To make the event not only effective, but also safe, an on-site laboratory worked at the event, which on the spot without fail did tests for Covid-19 to everyone who did not have a vaccination certificate or test results.
