The Maule Region and the fruit for export
The Chinese delegation wanted to understand the Maule offer in different areas. That is why representatives of the PER Maule, the Central Agricultural, the Association of Fruit Exporters of Chile AG (Asoex), the Lautaro Cooperative and the Loncomilla Cooperative participated in the meeting.
Paula Gajardo, the manager of the strategic program PerMaule, said: "This collaboration agreement is very important for the food sector. We can't forget that this province has 74 million people, so this is an opportunity that can't be missed if we want to comply with our slogan: Maule Feeds the World."
In turn, Paola Alvarez, the director of the Office of the Productive Development Program of ASOEX in Maule, made a presentation to the visitors where she spoke about Chile's and the Maule Region's fruit industry, as well as the work that ASOEX carries out to consolidate their leadership position as the main exporter of table grapes, cherries, blueberries and fresh plums in the world.
"Chile is currently the main supplier of fresh fruits in China, and the Maule Region is an area of great fruit production. This is demonstrated by the large amount of infrastructure installed in the area, for example, we have more than 1,100 cold storage chambers which allows us to cover 2 million cubic meters. In addition, there are more than 340 packing companies with a capacity of 600 thousand tons each season in the region," Alvarez said.
The representative of ASOEX added that during the 2016-2017 season Chile had exported more than 2.6 million tons of fruit, and that the Maule Region had accounted for more than 564 thousand tons of this volume, i.e. 23% of the total fruit that Chile exports, which makes it the country's second biggest fruit producing and exporting region.
Source: SimFRUIT