Elena Roman rejoices when she imagines that the hundreds of avocados that she packs with her hands in a plant of the municipality of Uruapan, in the mountain of the state of Michoacan (west), are now arriving at the stores and tables of China.
"It's nice when you think they're going to travel all the way there. Knowing that is exciting," said the 40-year-old worker and mother of four.
Elena works in one of the eight avocado packing facilities in Uruapan that export to the Asian country, a market that Mexican avocado producers are trying hard to conquer.
Avo Hass, the company for which she works, has the goal of sending 300 tons of avocados to China in 2017, twice as many as the 150 tons they exported in their first two years to this market.
The company's director, Nadia Flores, said that, even though the United States buys most of the 12,000 tons of avocados they harvest in their orchards and also buy from third parties, they were now interested in increasing their presence in China.
"We are turning our eyes towards China because we see it's an excellent opportunity," said the company.
To win customers in China, Uruapan producers rely on the taste and quality of the avocados from Michoacan, the biggest producer of avocados in the world and in Mexico, as it produces seven out of 10 avocados consumed in the world.
Michoacan produced almost 1.5 million tons of avocado during 2016, an amount that represents 78 percent of the 1.8 million tons produced in Mexico, according to the agricultural statistics yearbook of the federal government.
Uruapan, which is known as the avocado capital of the world, contributed with 10.5 percent of the state's avocado production, one of its main economic incomes along with the remittances migrants send from the United States.
This municipality, which has 315,000 inhabitants, devotes at least 13,800 hectares of land to growing avocado trees, which can be observed in vegetable gardens of all sizes beside the roads or even in small gardens.
Each of these trees, which can grow up to 25 meters high, can produce three tons of fruit in one season, which normally runs from July to January.
"The avocado from Michoacan is creamy and buttery," stated the manager of crops from Avo Hass, Fernando Alonso, who estimated that 60 percent of the population of Uruapan make a living from this crop.
According to the commercial director of the exporter San Marcos Avocado, Angelica Villalpando, the unrivalled flavor of the Mexican avocado is what opens doors and the reason why different markets prefer this product to the avocado produced in other countries.
Based in California, USA, San Marcos Avocado is working to increase the 20 tons of Mexican avocado it sends to China every month because it has observed that Chinese market is opening up to the exotic green fruit.
Exports of avocado to the Asian giant closed at 10,294 tons last year, a giant jump from the 16.7 tons shipped in 2009, according to data from the Ministry of Economy of Mexico.
Sales to China are still far short of US demand, which bought almost 77 percent of the more than 1 million tons of avocados Mexico exported in 2016. However, China has already positioned itself among the top 10 markets for avocados.
"It's a special market. It's a demanding market. It's a market that demands infinite standards of quality, health, safety, aesthetics, packaging," Villalpando said.
"I could say that we are growing by about 100 percent a year. We have high expectations," he added.
Avo Hass's chief operating officer, Miguel Patlan, said China was specifically interested in small, green-colored or matted avocados with no cosmetic damage on their exterior and that can be exhibited in their store for 15 days.
"Regarding fruit quality, they tells us that the fruit must be totally clean," he added.
At the company's 1,100-square-meter plant, a giant machine chooses the ideal avocados for China through weight and size sensors. Later, the workers like Elena, check them and store them in boxes.
Ships take 26 days to arrive from the Mexican Pacific coast to Chinese ports, such as Shanghai or Shenzhen, so the avocado shipments generally travel at 3.3 degrees of temperature for fresh preservation.
Producers and marketers are confident that sales to China will increase because they meet the health requirements demanded by the Chinese government throughout the production, storage, packaging, and transfer chain.
An inspector from the Ministry of Agriculture checks each of the 59 boxes of avocados shipped to verify that they are clean of pests before they leave the plants heading for the ports.
"We want to show them that we are doing things well, that we comply with all the requirements, and that we have a good product," said Flores, the director of Avo Hass.
Source: Xinhua