Eghtesad e Sabz Online : ” Afra” Holding’s main activity is in the field of oil seeds and vegetable oil, grains, sugar and protein, I can say that we have a complete food supply chain. In the field of grains, it is active in various fields such as grain import, oil extraction, oil refining and processing, packaging and production of livestock and poultry feed and breeding of livestock and poultry. Reaching where we are today is the result of more than two decades of efforts. We consider ourselves obliged to always update ourselves with global standards in order to provide better production conditions in order to achieve our mission of creating a supply chain in the manufacturing and food industries. It is a transformation to not get into trouble and be able to be one of the most complete food supply chains in the region.”
What you read are parts of the words of Amirhossein Afrashtepour, the CEO of “Afra” Oil Industries Holding, an educated manager who completed his academic degrees at the bachelor’s level of economics and master’s degree in Commodity Trading & Shipping at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. What follows is the result of a conversation with him:
Regarding the fact that you were recently a speaker at the “Iran Green” conference. In your opinion, to what extent has this conference achieved its goals and what are its strengths and weaknesses?
I need to thank the team and the board of directors of “Iran Green” for creating such an atmosphere, as we know that we can rarely participate in specialized conferences, but with the correct and precise planning of “Iran Green” it has been possible, The conferences are beyond domestic standards and it is easy to say that we are witnessing programs at the international level . If a solution can be found to facilitate the issuance of visas for people who want to participate in this program, it will be possible for more people to attend the conferences; for example, considering good relations with Russia currently, there are many Russian participants in this year’s conference, and we hope to see more participants from different countries in the coming years .
Considering that the focus of “Iran Green” is on the strategic market of Iran, to what extent has it been successful in bringing together private and public sector activists in this sector?
It can be said that with the help of “Iran Green”, organizations and associations active in the field of grains and related fields, private and government institutions cooperate more easily than before and were able to find some solutions for existing challenges.
— Can you please describe the most important challenges of supplying Iran’s grains and oilseeds?
The decrease in subsidy caused us sharp decrease in liquidity and delay in payments in the Iranian market. The change in the preferential exchange rate caused a big shock to the market, which included importers, producers, and consumers, and the purchasing power of all decreased by 7 times. As we have seen, this change had a significant impact on the importer and producer and caused huge losses to them. On the one hand, the speed of purchasing foreign currency decreased and the speed of payment to international sellers slowed down. It can be said that it was a difficult year for the Iranian market.
What is your assessment of the specialized workshops organized by “Iran Green”?
I can say that the “Iran Green” team did a precise and intelligent job by designing specialized panels in different areas of their conference, as you saw, considering that expert guests were invited for each panel, they were able to go through superficial statements with careful planning and talk about deeper issues ,which added to the quality of this conference .
Photo: Shokoufeh KhoshNesar / Eghtesad e Sabz Online
