Top global cooperative federation team in town tomorrow

• EDB pioneers Zen-Noh’s first entry into Sri Lanka
• Four Zen-Noh delegates in Colombo

Opening a new page in Sri Lanka’s agricultural exports history, Japan’s top cooperative federation, which is also considered one of the leading national agricultural associations in the world, will be in town tomorrow.

Four delegates from Zen-Noh (Japanese National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations) are presently in Colombo.

Zen-Noh is one of the world’s largest federations of agricultural cooperatives founded in 1972. Zen-Noh is involved in the marketing, tracking and quality assurance of the products of its cooperatives. Zen-Noh is one of the world’s largest importers of animal feeds and agricultural fertilisers. 70% of the sales of chemical fertilisers in Japan are reportedly handled by Zen-Noh.

Facilitated by EDB, Zen-Noh will begin its Lankan partnership with coco peat export product support, in that the visiting team will commence their technical consultancy to develop coco peat products in Sri Lanka to identify constrains in production of coco peat, obtain technical consultancy to overcome problems, create awareness about the Lankan coco peat industry to Japanese buyers, introduce Sri Lanka  to Japan as a capable and reliable supplier of coco peat  and promote Sri Lankan coco peat in Japan through Zen-Noh.

The pioneering Zen-Noh delegation is now in town as a result of a one-to-one meeting EDB secured with Zen-Noh during the 8th International Garden Expo Tokyo (GARDEX) in 2014.

Zen-Noh’s Manager, Horicultural Materials Section Kyouko Shinabe, Manager, Fertiliser Section Suzuki Wataru, Advisor, Foreign Trade Department Hiroyuki Takasu and Zen-Noh official Shigesumi Masanobu will be in Colombo until 7 August.

EDB believes that Zen-Noh will be a good contact point to promote Lankan exports in Japan.

The technology developed by Zen-Noh will be an added advantage to develop Lankan products to meet global standards as well. Zen-Noh’s agro industrial machinery development capacity is well-known.

As of last year, Zen-Noh had 1,032 cooperative unions under it, with 156 secondary unions. It has 8,200 employees with a capitalisation exceeding $ 925 million (2014).