Multan — Pakistan’s “Mango City” — sits at the heart of a mango sector that produces approximately 1.8 million metric tons annually but exports only 6–7% as fresh fruit, with the remainder absorbing huge post-harvest losses or sold at distress prices during seasonal gluts. Recognizing that value addition through dehydration is one of the most direct routes to absorbing surplus production, generating higher-value export products and opening new market segments (dehydrated mango cubes, slices, powders, pulp products), PHDEC has executed the establishment of a state-of-the-art Mango Dehydration Facility at the Muhammad Nawaz Shareef University of Agriculture, Multan (MNSUAM) — funded through Pakistan’s Export Development Fund (EDF).
The facility was formally inaugurated on 9 September 2025 in Multan, in partnership with MNSUAM as the host academic institution. It is conceived as more than a processing unit — it is an Integrated Value Addition Unit serving simultaneously as a working production facility and a teaching, demonstration and applied-research platform for students, faculty, processors and entrepreneurs from across Pakistan’s mango belt. The technical configuration covers the full dehydration process — sorting, washing, slicing, blanching, drying and nitrogen-flushed packaging — at industrial-relevant scale. PHDEC has paired the inauguration with a complementary workshop on “Branding and Packaging of Value-Added Horticultural Products to Compete in High-End International Markets” held at MNSUAM in November 2025, addressing the downstream challenges of nitrogen flushing protocols, packaging materials, label design and brand positioning required to convert dehydrated mango into a premium export product.
The project is now fully operational and represents a major institutional collaboration between the federal export-promotion mandate (PHDEC, EDF, Ministry of Commerce) and provincial academia (MNSUAM). It directly anchors PHDEC’s broader EDF-supported infrastructure programme of 37 value-added projects across provinces, and is being positioned by the company as a replicable demonstration model that can be scaled to additional mango districts. Vice Chancellor MNSUAM Dr Asif has publicly appreciated PHDEC’s role in linking academia and industry for export-led growth — a partnership model that PHDEC intends to extend to other crops and host institutions.
Objectives
- Establish Pakistan’s first dedicated, university-hosted mango dehydration facility as a working demonstration of industrial-scale mango value addition.
- Address the chronic problem of post-harvest losses and seasonal gluts in Pakistan’s 1.8 MMT mango sector by absorbing surplus fruit into a higher-value processing pipeline.
- Convert Pakistani mango from a near-exclusively fresh-fruit export (6–7% of production) into a diversified export basket including dehydrated cubes, slices, pulp and powders.
- Build local technical capacity through a hands-on training and applied-research platform serving students, faculty, processors and entrepreneurs from across the mango belt.
- Anchor PHDEC’s broader EDF-funded portfolio of 37 value-addition infrastructure projects with a high-visibility, scalable flagship model.
- Strengthen the strategic federal–provincial and academia–industry partnership between PHDEC and MNSUAM as a template for future PHDEC infrastructure interventions.
Outcomes
- State-of-the-art mango dehydration facility inaugurated on 9 September 2025 at MNSUAM, fully operational and producing export-ready dehydrated mango product.
- Reduction in seasonal post-harvest losses for the Multan mango belt, with surplus fruit absorbed into a value-addition pipeline rather than sold at distress prices.
- A trained pool of MNSUAM students, faculty, processors and entrepreneurs gaining hands-on exposure to industrial-scale dehydration, packaging and quality protocols.
- Complementary branding and packaging workshop completed in November 2025, addressing nitrogen-flushing, label design and shelf-life issues for premium positioning.
A replicable demonstration model that PHDEC can extend to other mango districts and other commodities — strengthening Pakistan’s broader value-addition infrastructure base.
