Goychay & Aznar history
At the turn of the 19th century, at the place where today’s Goychay is located, a settlement was established to evacuate people who became victims of the devastating earthquake in Shamakhi. Shamakhians were the first residents of the city. Later, Goychai has become the center of the region of the same name, which included seven modern districts of Azerbaijan (Goychay, Ujar, Zardab, Agdash, Agsu, Kurdamir, Ismayilli).In the 1960s, on the basis of the inter-district procurement agency of the Goychay district of the Azerbaijan SSR, a conserved fruit juice production plant was created. Its founder and first director was Timur Faraj ogly Akhmedov, who wrote many glorious pages in the history of the Republic’s agriculture and laid foundation for fruit juice production in Azerbaijan. The efforts of Timur Akhmedov resulted in the creation of new specialized pomegranate sovkhozes (state-owned farms) and expansion of old and establishment of new plantations of the best selection varieties of pomegranates, which became an impulse for the expansion of cultivation of pomegranates not only in Shirvan but also in the neighboring regions.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and ensuing general decline in production could not but affect the Goychay plant. However, in early 2006, the son of his father, famous politician and businessman, Farkhad Timurovich Akhmedov continued his family’s good tradition, having bought AZNAR with the purpose to give the plant its good name back and to revive the popularity of its products.
He made a decision not only to restore the production facility but also to plant new pomegranate gardens at the place of abandoned and cutover plantations. Under his guidance, an investment program for reviving the industry was developed, which envisaged a fundamental reconstruction of the plant based on the state-of-the-art technology and a restoration of legendary pomegranate plantations.