Cristian Tagle is the commercial manager of Lo Garces, the largest exporter of cherries, and as such, he has a great responsibility on his shoulders. As if that weren’t enough, he is also president of the Cherry Committee.
According to Tagle, the main weakness of the industry is that the harvest is concentrated in a few weeks.
"Whatever we do, the problem will persist. We can mitigate it by planting earlier or later varieties, but the main challenge is how we harvest, pack and sell in a short period of time a volume that can exceed our capacities, like in this last season in the two peak weeks. The industry is obviously increasing the amount of packaging lines.If there’s one thing that the cherry industry has been successful at, it’s been adapting and investing with audacity. Year after year investments increase.”
Tagle also said they were working to let the shipping companies know about the growing needs of boarding, especially in the weeks of greatest harvest, at the end of December.
One of the alternatives that exporters are considering is using two fast boats per week in the peak season.
I don’t think that the increase in volume will bring down prices, he said.
"In the cherry business, quality is going to put a ceiling on demand. The last 10% to 15% of last season’s volume was difficult to sell because it had a tremendous quality disparity and the market was not willing to pay for it. We need to have quality and consistency."
He also said that the Chinese retailer Alibaba had recently released a report on the last season. One of the findings is that the market was composed of 300 million middle class, hard core consumers.
"This class will double by 2023. If per capita consumption continues this way, we’ll need 70 million boxes. People are interested in consuming healthy and quality products,” he said.
Source: El Mercurio