Colombian tropical and exotic fruit flying off to meet Middle Eastern and European demand
Colombian avocados and exotic fruit such as passion fruit sent by the export company Barbatuska is l…Colombian avocados and exotic fruit such as passion fruit sent by the export company Barbatuska is literally flying off to meet demand in the Middle Eastern countries of Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
"Interest in Europe is also strong. We airfreight the fruit to reach the Middle Eastern markets quicker, helping to land fresher and higher quality products. This allows us to realise very good prices in these markets," says Jennifer Martinez, head of international trade at the company.
“We airfreight especially the avocados to these countries. Sending our produce by sea is too expensive while it also takes too long to reach the destination market. The prices we get is between $4,7- $5,7 per kg. There is also the problem with the sea transit time, it takes more or less 40 days for our consignments to reach the destination. Because of the war in Ukraine it created a lot more problems further increasing the transit time together with delays making the timeline to the Emirates so much longer,” explains Martinez.
Barbatuska is an export company, located near Bogota, which was started more than two years ago by two Colombians as a family business. Melanie Blanco and her husband Haider Rueda, are the general managers of the company, together with Jennifer Martinez who is also the export head. The company works with around 16 growers across Colombia with a big focus on the avocados, passion fruit, and physalis.
“We export two containers per week to Rotterdam. Now we have customers in Amsterdam, France and Germany. We do LCL containers with all clients. We can also manage passion fruit and physalis. For our exports to the Emirates and Europe the quality requirements are very different. In Europe we have to focus on the specific MRL’s while in Dubai it differs a lot. We want to increase our containers to Europe. We need to do the analysis and patterns in advance. We are a small company. It is important for us to focus on the MRL to Europe and make sure it is on point."
"Our target clients are retail, which we prefer. We have these products available every month. We don’t have a problem to provide it. Each farm has about three to four hectares. We work 100% from the Colombian countryside,” states Martinez.