The Brazilian exporter of mangoes and limes, UP-Fruit, has expanded by buying their own farm to secure and increase supplies to their main market of Europe. Cassiano Berol, from the UP-Fruit Sales Department, says “Brazilian mango, considering all varieties of it, we can also supply all year-round, especially now that we’ve just bought our own farm situated in the northeast of Brazil in the San Francisco Valley and soon we’ll start loading our own mangoes. This will help us to increase our volumes. For the lime we’ll load both from the North and Southeast of Brazil.”
The UP-Fruit Team in Brazil
UP-Fruit also exports other fruit and vegetables that include sweet potato, ginger (which is available from the end of June), avocado, Kabocha Pumpkin, atemoya and some Cush Yam. “In the months of June to August, we have almost all of our fruits available. Some of them just like limes and sweet potato we can supply all year round. Our produce goes especially to Europe where we can load all of it. Countries like the USA also buys our ginger and mangoes. Canada buys our mangoes, figs, atemoya and tropical avocado. The Middle East is also a destination, but due to longer distances and transit times we’re not so competitive in comparison to African and Asian produce suppliers,” states Berol.
Increasing volumes
“In 2022 we had an increase of 40% in comparison to 2021. In 2023 we are aiming at increasing our volumes with 50% in comparison to 2022. Lime is our flagship as we have both plantation and a packing house, followed by ginger and sweet potato that are products we are working strongly with as well. With the new lime and mango plantations that we’ve just acquired in the North of Brazil, we’ll have conditions to have these two fruits available all year round. As Brasil is a continental country, the North and South have completely different seasons and weather. It is very important to take advantage of these different areas in different months of the year, harvesting the best fruit to pack.”
Overcoming Brazil’s weather challenges
“Brazil faced pouring and endless rains in the beginning of 2023, which affected several plantations, especially in the South. The Central region of Brazil was less affected. Regarding the North, in 2022 we had lots of rains at the North which affected the quality of the mangoes. For 2023 in the North we see excellent weather (due to El Niño) that brought dried weather for that region, instead. Mangoes are in concentrated In the Northeast region, 2,000 or 3,000 thousand km’s from the south, this region is known for its dry weather, so we can irrigate it in the perfect way it needs, resulting in excellent quality,” explains Berol.
Focus on being a bigger supplier
“Up-Fruit keeps increasing its participation on fresh fruit supplying. Recently we bought the premises/packing house of Indaiá Exotic in Valinhos SP, whose sales team and packing house work force also joined us. We also bought a farm to grow in the North of Brazil, we are aiming to have more fruits available in different periods of the year and guarantee quality to our customers. UP-Fruit is working hard to become a specialist supplier in Brazilian lime, sweet potato, ginger and mango,” concludes Berol.
For more information:
Cassiano Berol
UP-Fruit
Tel: +55 11 9 9676 8378
Email: cassiano@up-fruit.com
www.up-fruit.com