Top Fresh Produce Exporters in Zambia — Vegetables, Roses, Macadamia & Organic Honey

ZEGA is Zambia's premier horticulture export association, established in 1984 and awarded the Zambia Association of Chambers of Commerce and Industry trophy for Best Exporting Company. The association promotes the interests of all exporters of fresh horticulture produce from Zambia, maintains a Code of Practice covering good agricultural practices, environmental protection, human resource management, and product quality assurance, and provides collective services including market intelligence, logistics coordination, and compliance support to its approximately 35 direct exporter members.

ZEGA's Code of Conduct compliance is a membership requirement — making ZEGA membership an immediate credibility signal for international buyers. The association has pioneered GlobalG.A.P. adoption in Zambia and represents the organised, export-serious operators in the country's horticulture sector. For buyers entering the Zambian market, ZEGA membership is the primary filter for identifying reliable, compliance-ready suppliers.

Agriflora Ltd is Zambia's largest commercial rose grower, producing over 50 million stems of export-quality roses annually for the global market. The company started horticulture exports in 1994 with high-value conventional vegetables grown on company farms and by contract growers distributed across Zambia's three geographical zones — a multi-zone model specifically designed to ensure year-round supply of fresh quality produce regardless of seasonal variation in any single region. Today, Agriflora operates as an integrated rose and organic fresh produce exporter, also producing organic vegetables including baby corn, baby carrots, fine beans, and chillies for the EU organic market.

For EU buyers seeking large-volume, consistently supplied Zambian cut roses with GlobalG.A.P. and organic certification, Agriflora represents the country's most commercially scaled and historically established flower export operation.

York Farm is a major Zambian fresh produce and flower exporter operating two farms (Kashima Farm and Makeni) plus a dedicated packhouse for sorting and packing export-bound products. The company specialises in baby corn, sugar snap peas, mange-tout peas, chillies, and fine beans exported to Germany, the UK, New Zealand, and South Africa — a geographic spread that demonstrates York Farm's established international buyer relationships. The company employs up to 800 workers and has achieved compliance with international food safety, farming, labour, and environmental standards required for participation in EU and UK supermarket supply chains.

York Farm is a WTO case study in how developing country operators successfully join global value chains for agricultural products through compliance investments and quality management system adoption. Their Zambia horticulture model — combining owned farms with careful post-harvest handling — is the operational standard that international buyers should seek in Zambian suppliers.

Khal Amazi produces a supersweetheart rose that is a mainstay of European supermarkets' flower offerings. The company operates 64 hectares of greenhouses across three sites in the Chalimbana Valley on the eastern outskirts of Lusaka — one of the most concentrated rose production operations in Southern Africa. Growing a full colour range from its greenhouse sites, Khal Amazi's roses are specifically bred and grown for European retail programmes that demand consistent colour uniformity, stem length, and vase life performance.

The Chalimbana Valley location provides optimal growing conditions for year-round rose production — altitude, temperature range, and water availability combine to produce premium quality roses competitive with Kenya's dominant export production. For European flower buyers seeking supply diversification outside Kenya and Ethiopia, Khal Amazi is the most commercially significant Zambian rose producer.

Forest Fruits Zambia is the primary organiser of Zambia's smallholder organic honey and dried fruit production, working with over 1,000 registered honey producers across Zambia's vast forest regions. The organisation provides assistance, training, and quality management to village-level farmer groups, each supervised by village representatives who coordinate production and conduct quality controls. Organic bee products sourced through Forest Fruits achieve 40% above conventional honey prices — a significant income premium that demonstrates the commercial value of Zambia's organic certification infrastructure.

For EU and UK specialty food buyers seeking certified organic Zambian honey with traceable smallholder sourcing credentials, Forest Fruits Zambia represents the most established and scalable organic honey supply channel in the country. Their 8,000+ hectares of certified organic forest and bush-land for wild harvesting is one of the largest certified organic wild harvest areas in Southern Africa.

OPPAZ is the national industry body for Zambia's organic agricultural sector, governing and supporting organic certification across both large commercial farms and smallholder producer groups. By early certification rounds through ECOCERT and IFOAM-accredited certifiers, Zambia established one of Africa's most mature organic export ecosystems, with 23 certified organic operators covering 2,500 ha of farmed land and 8,000 ha of forest and wild harvest areas. Certified organic products include fresh export vegetables (mange-tout, sugar snaps, fine beans, courgettes, carrots), honey, mushrooms, coffee, groundnuts, sesame, and herbs.

For EU buyers who must source organic-certified produce from Africa, OPPAZ membership and ECOCERT or Soil Association certification are the verification standards to request from Zambian organic suppliers.

Zambia's macadamia sector has developed significantly, with Eastern Province farms supplying macadamia nuts to South African processing facilities (including Harmonie Macadamia in Mpumalanga, which imports from Kenya and Zambia) as well as regional buyers. Zambia's macadamia production benefits from favourable soils and growing conditions in the Eastern and Northern Provinces. The sector's integration with the South African macadamia processing industry — where the world's largest macadamia processing capacity is concentrated — gives Zambian producers reliable route-to-market through established processor relationships.

The Chalimbana Valley east of Lusaka is Zambia's primary cut flower production zone, with multiple ZEGA-member operators growing roses and summer flowers for air freight export to the Netherlands, UK, and EU markets. The collective strength of Chalimbana Valley rose producers — including Khal Amazi as the largest, alongside smaller ZEGA-member operators — gives European flower buyers multiple options for sourcing Zambian supply. Summer flowers grown in Zambia include Atriplex, Amaranthus, Hypericum, Rudbeckia, Euphorbia, and Ammi-majus, complementing the dominant rose production.

Zambia's vast Northern forest areas support one of Africa's most distinctive organic export products — wild-harvested certified organic mushrooms collected and dried for EU specialty food markets. These ECOCERT-certified wild harvest mushrooms are produced under the organic standards coordinated by OPPAZ, with forest areas certified under the same framework that covers the country's honey and other wild-harvest products. For EU specialty food importers, organic food wholesalers, and health food retailers seeking authentic wild-harvest African mushrooms with traceable organic certification, Zambia's northern forest operators represent a genuinely differentiated product in the premium dried mushroom category.

Green asparagus is one of Zambia's highest-value specialty vegetable exports — a crop that ZEGA has specifically identified as a premium category for its members given its high per-kilogram returns in European retail markets. Zambian asparagus producers grow for the EU market using air freight logistics, targeting the supply windows when European production is limited and prices are strongest. The crop's high value per kilogram relative to its weight makes it particularly suitable for Zambia's air freight export model, where shipping cost per kilogram is a significant factor in landed price competitiveness.

Zambia's fine bean and baby vegetable export sector is built on a network of ZEGA-member commercial farms and their associated out-grower programmes, providing year-round supply of fine beans, baby carrots, baby corn, patti pans, okra, and sugar snaps to EU retail buyers. The out-grower model — where commercial farms support smallholder farmers with inputs, training, and guaranteed offtake — is central to Zambia's approach to horticulture export and provides EU buyers with compelling social sustainability narratives alongside consistent product supply. For EU buyers building specialist vegetable programmes from African origins, Zambia's ZEGA-member operators offer a tested, compliance-ready supply network.