Yucatan seeks to export maradol papayas, starting next year, to Texas, United States. To do so, the producers had to access federal and state funds in order to have 700,000 pesos that will enable them to build the necessary infrastructure to reduce the 150 tons lost per week in the production of papaya in the state.
The representative of the Papaya Product from Yucatan, Carlos Escalante Mendez, stated that they currently generated between 50 and 150 tons of papaya a week, but that sometimes, due to the lack of adequate infrastructure, they could only market 70 tons.
The fruit must be washed, disinfected, labelled, wrapped in white paper and shipped in cardboard boxes on trailers to the local and regional markets.
"We are exporting 25 percent of our production because we still don't have our own facilities," he said.
"We produce more than 60 hectares and lose about 30 percent of the production, some 200,000 pesos, because of our lack of facilities," he said.
Escalante Mendez also said that, with the resources they obtained from federal funding, they would be able to have a packaging line, which could be moved according to the production needs.
This packaging line should be arriving next week from Colima. Meanwhile, they have already started with the drilling for the installation of the structure for the line that will be located at kilometre 24 of the Valladolid-TizimÃn road. The plant will generate 50 to 80 jobs.
Source: Yucatanahora.com