Peruvian group expands with frozen mangoes

The Peruvian group Camposol, known for its growing and export activities in fresh fruits and vegetables, is expanding its frozen produce business, thus offering a more complete product range to its global customer base. 

The company has become the number one producer of Peru in frozen mangoes, avocados, and blueberries.

According to Luis Miguel Baanante, Commercial Director Frozen of Camposol, the company’s production volume of frozen fruit is in the range of 10,000 – 12,000 tons per year. Camposol is the company with the highest fruit freezing capacity installed in Peru and disposes of two state of the art freezing tunnels and – the most recent investment of Camposol in this product category – a processing line with HPP technology (high pressure processing), looking to offer new alternatives to the market. 

The frozen category has a strategic function for Camposol, as it is perfectly complementary to the fresh fruit business.

During the last few years, the IQF mango of Peruvian origin has found an extraordinary acceptance on the global market, reaching a volume of 32,000 tons in the 2015/2016 season, which means an increase of almost 28% against the previous year. In the same period, exports of fresh mangoes from Peru increased by 21%, to 131,638 tons.

After the difficulties encountered by the Peruvian mangoes during the 2014/2015 season, when Peruvian exports were affected by the impacts of unusual climatic conditions that made the total frozen export volume drop by 12%, to 24,914 tons (during that year, Camposol registered a demand that was almost 5 times higher than its offer available), the 2015/2016 season ended with a better performance and Camposol consolidated its position as leader in the Frozen sector with an increase of its exports by 37%, to 4,406 tons. For the 2016/2017 season, the agricultural output is expected to reach its full potential, and a balanced situation between offer and demand is foreseen. The most important markets for frozen mangoes from Camposol are North America (52%), Asia (24%), and Europe (22%). The remaining 2% are exported to other Latin American countries.

Apart from mangoes, Camposol also focuses on frozen avocados, in different cuts such as cubes, slices and halves in IQF, as well as the consolidation of the offer of avocado pulp, produced with high pressure technology (HPP) that permits a smooth pasteurization and protects the product. In addition, just like the fresh product, also the frozen blueberries of Camposol find very good acceptance on the international markets and offer a strong growth potential. 

Asked for the future perspectives for Camposol’s Frozen division, Luis Miguel Baanante says: “We are working on the diversification of the existing packaging range toward alternatives offering an added value to our clients and on the consolidation of our position as HPP pulp producers. Another development project is the search for a fourth crop, which might be strawberries – although this is still in the evaluation phase.”