"Banana is a commodity product, so people will always buy bananas.”"

With about 2,000 banana-producing hectares in Ecuador, Global Fresh Trading exports bananas to Russia and Europe. Though competition from neighboring producers and complications from the Russian ban on European goods has caused some challenges, they've continued to export around 400,000 boxes of bananas per week.

“We get almost all of our fruit from our production in Ecuador, and we sell it under different labels, though the biggest label is our own,” said Elizaveta Nikolaeva of Global Fresh Trading. “We mostly do conventional bananas, but we also do organic and fairtrade organic bananas.” Around 80 percent of Global Fresh's production comes from plantations in El Oro, where a unique soil composition, favorable weather and experienced employees contribute to a weekly yield of between 40 and 60 boxes of bananas per hectare, which is considerably better than the 30-box average for all of Ecuador.

Global Fresh, and the rest of Ecuador's growers, compete with growers in Colombia and Costa Rica, who don't have to cross the Panama Canal in order to reach Europe. Most of Global Fresh's exports go to Russia, and while the Russian ban on European goods didn't affect it directly, it did affect its customers. But despite those challenges, Global Fresh has continued to thrive.

“Some of our clients had trouble making payments because of the situation in Russia, but that was at the end of last year,” said Nikolaeva. “The banana is a commodity product, so people will always buy bananas.”