MOSCOW, March 14. /TASS/. Fesco has delivered its first batch of bananas from India, a total of 22 metric tons, to the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, the Russian shipping group said.

"The batch of bananas weighing 22 metric tons (more than 1,500 boxes) was loaded at an exporter’s warehouse in the Indian State of Maharashtra into a Dalreftrans 40-foot refrigerated container and then delivered to the port of Nhava Sheva in the city of Mumbai. The container was loaded onto the group’s ship, which sailed to Russia on February 18 as part of the Fesco Indian LineWest scheduled sea service. The container carrier berthed in the port of Novorossiysk on March 13," Fesco said.

X5 Import, a unit of the Russian retailer X5 Group, was the receiving party of the batch. Dalreftrans, a Fesco subsidiary, acted as the operator for transportation. "Fesco sent the next batch of bananas from India to Novorossiysk on March 12," the company noted.

Fesco is ready to substitute Ecuadorian bananas for bananas from other markets, Fesco Board Chairman Andrey Severilov said in February. Volumes depend on the needs of retail chains, he added.

The Russian Federal Service of Veterinary and Phytosanitary Supervision expressed its concern earlier regarding deliveries of bananas from Ecuador in view of systemic detections of a hazardous quarantined object for Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union’s member-states in them - the Megaselia scalaris (Loew) fly. The watchdog asked the relevant authority of the country to suspend the certification of bananas from five Ecuadorian exporters that committed the largest number of violations. In late February, the regulator said that Ecuador had resumed certifying bananas supplied to Russia by five companies by agreement with the Russian watchdog.