The attendees of the 2017 version of EXPONUT, an event held by ChileNut in CasaPiedra yesterday, agreed that the production and export of Chilean nuts continued to grow and that this implied important challenges for the Industry; such as: investing in infrastructure, strengthening and opening markets, as well as promoting greater consumption and knowledge of the national product through more extensive promotional actions.
The presidents of ChileNut and of the Chilean Walnut Commission stated that a first step to meet these challenges and opportunities had been the signing of a joint operation agreement between both organizations in December 2016.
"The truth is that we will produce more than 100 thousand tons this year and we needed to have a single strong society, so we don't compete for the resources to promote and open markets. We needed to have one organization with a common goal that could also be known and recognized by our authorities, so that we could show them what we are working on and that what we request is for everyone," said Alvaro Jimenez, President of Chilenut.
"Much of the growth and success that our industry has achieved is due to the quality of the Chilean walnut, which is better than the Californian product in terms of color and taste, but also because our production takes place in the counter season. The US supplies the markets from October to February, while we start supplying them in March. This allows us to be complementary and to position ourselves as the leading supplier of the Southern Hemisphere. This allows the destination markets to buy the product twice a year, have less stock and a fresh product. These are attributes that we have exploited, but we need to continue strengthening the industry and be more united," said Karl Samsing, President of the Chilean Walnut Commission.
Samsing added that "having grown has forced us to have a bigger share of the world users' demand, be it supermarkets or processors, and this requires supporting our sales management, and that is what we are focused on in 2017."
Large-scale promotion
According to the presidents of Chilenut and of the Chilean Walnut Commission, promotional actions are key to face the industry's export growth. Thus, the industry is planning a nearly 6 million dollar campaign to promote consumption and knowledge of Chilean nuts among end consumers in emerging markets in Asia, especially China, Korea, and India.
"The idea is to agree on a 3-cent-per-kilo-of-fruit contribution to develop some markets, starting with China and India, which are very promising markets, and then continue with others. We have to achieve what the cherry industry did so well, and they mainly focused on the Chinese market," said Jimenez, adding that this was a project that was under development, and that needed the support of the private sector and of ProChile.
"Fortunately for us, these Eastern countries usually consume walnuts, as they are aware of their contributions to health. Thus, we do not need to teach them, but we must let them know about our quality and distinguish our product from others," said the President of Chilenut.
"It is not enough for the product to sell itself, as has happened so far; we must go beyond that. We must penetrate markets, and this is achieved through promotional actions. We are committed to this, and we are seeking for resources as it will take millions of dollars to carry out these promotional actions that will allow us to maintain the position of Chilean nut. If we can't achieve it, our product will fall from its high position. That is our challenge in 2017, creating awareness about the need to invest in this promotion," stressed the President of Chilean Walnut Commission.
Growth and Infrastructure
"Production has gone from more than 8 thousand tons to more than 100 thousand tons in a few years, which shows the great dynamism that this industry has. This is the second most planted fruit in Chile (...) with more than 43 thousand hectares planted, which means that Chile will becomes one of the world's biggest nut actors, which forces us to think about making large investments in technological development, sustainability and market development," stated the representative of ChileNut.
Jimenez added: "The great growth of our industry has created a need of having infrastructure to process nuts, as they must be dried, packed, split, packaged and conserved after being harvested. There are many developments to carry out to future."
"There are two stages of investment: an immediate one that we've been doing since last year, which involves harvesting, peeling and drying, which is basic to maintain the fruits in good condition. Then, once the fruit is dried, comes the question: what to do with it. The easy thing would be to sell it in its shell, and place it in markets where it is processed for domestic consumption. However the 100 or 180 thousand tons we expect is a very large volume for these markets. Then we must move on to a second stage linked to the processing and added value of this fruit, so we need investment in processing plants, to split them, mainly mechanically due to the shortage of labor. We require several plants, considering that one plant can process 5 thousand tons per year," Samsing added.
According to Odepa, in 2016 the planted area of walnut trees exceeded 42 thousand hectares (26 thousand in 2011), occupying the second place in the country, as the largest fruit planted, behind table grapes. Meanwhile, production projections indicate that this sector will exceed 166 thousand tons by 2021.
EXPONUT 2017 was attended by the Director of ODEPA, Claudia Carbonell and Pia Barros, the Deputy Director of Marketing and Events of ProChile, as well as Ronald Bown, the President of ASOEX, among other representatives of the public and private sectors linked to the Chilean nut sector.
During the meeting, Chilenut gave a special recognition to Juan Luis Vial, given his outstanding track record and contributions to this industry.
Source: SimFRUIT