The Ministry of Agriculture and the Colombian Agricultural Institute, ICA, stated that Japan's sanitary authority had approved the export protocol of Colombian Hass avocados to that country.
"This market is one of the national government's priorities for 2018. The approval of the requirements by Japan's health authority leaves us one step away from exporting to that market," said Luis Humberto Martinez, the manager of the ICA.
The protocol establishes the phytosanitary requirements to export Hass avocado, such as the production areas, transport conditions, traceability systems, packaging facilities, and the visit of the Japanese health officials to verify compliance with all these requirements to open this market.
According to the ICA manager, the Japanese authorities will visit the country once a year, in any of the Hass avocado harvest seasons.
"The articulated work between the ICA and the country's avocado growers has strengthened the growing demand for this fruit in international markets, based on the national production's sanitary strength and the sector's capacity to export its production to different places in the world," Martinez said.
The Ministry of Agriculture highlighted that Colombia could now export Hass avocado to the United States, Panama, Russia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Costa Rica, and the European Union.
In 2017, Colombia exported 30,341 tons of Hass avocado to different destinations in the world.
The ICA stated that it continued working to open new markets for the avocado this year, especially China, which has 1.3 billion potential consumers.
Source: elpais.com.co