Castilla Agrícola to export pineapples to the US and Central America

Castilla Agricola plans to export its pineapple production to the west coast of the United States an…

Castilla Agricola plans to export its pineapple production to the west coast of the United States and Central America.

After having had a strong showing in Europe, the company decided that it won't sell its product to this market in 2019, to conduct an internal reorganization. However, it won't abandon international sales, so it will focus in the Americas.

This is according to Gustavo Barona, the general manager of the company, who also said they would increase their presence at the national level. "We are, once again, becoming very strong in supermarkets chains like Cencosud, Exito, Olimpica, and La 14. In addition, domestic consumption has increased in recent times. We have gone from 1.8 kilos per capita per year to about 4 kilos per capita," said Barona.

According to the company's calculation, they exported 32% of the 26 million kilos they produced this year. "We shipped out about 416 containers this year, 70% of which was sent to Europe and 30% to South America," the manager said.

However, next year they won't be present in the Old Continent due to the oversupply coming from Costa Rica and low prices. "Costa Rica sells some 180 million boxes abroad, that is, some 127,000 containers. Meanwhile Colombia exports around 1.3 million boxes, i.e. 780 containers; not even 1% of what Costa Rica exports. And they have a strong presence in Europe," Barona stated.

The director said they would focus their international sales in South America and that they planned to return to Europe in 2020, after working on their fruit's quality and consistency so that it can last longer, due to the long transit time there are from Colombia.

The recent admissibility of Colombia's pineapple in Argentina and the negotiations to access Peru are two elements that also play in favor of Castilla Agrícola, in view of its 2019 exports.

Barona also said there were some farms that hadn't worked as expected, so they would concentrate their efforts again in the south of the Valle del Cauca and in northern Cauca.

Moreover, the Maersk shipping company stated that in the last two years container shipments of fresh fruits, such as pineapple, avocado, and citrus, among others, had been growing strongly, and had already reached the amount of containers of coffee that the country exports.

In fact, in the second quarter of 2018 and for the second consecutive quarter, the country exported more containers of fresh fruits (excluding bananas) than of coffee; as it exported 1,261 containers of fresh fruits and 1,220 containers of coffee. This trend continued in the third quarter of the year.