Following years of rapid development, avocados have gained strong market recognition in China, with growing consumer demand. However, enhancing the eating experience remains a key challenge for the industry. To address this, Mr. Avocado has officially opened its new East China Ripening Center in Shanghai, backed by support from all shareholders. The facility has been fully upgraded in terms of equipment, technology, and process management, aiming to optimize the ripening efficiency and product consistency of avocados and provide a more stable supply of ready-to-eat avocados to the regional market. In this regard, Ms. Shi Chunyu, the head of the company, accepted an interview with Freshplaza.
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Mr. Avocado took the lead in launching ready-to-eat avocados in the Chinese market in 2017. Driven by this, the sales of ready-to-eat avocados in the Chinese market have doubled year after year, but this trend also tests the professionalism of Chinese avocado companies. "We always hear feedback from consumers that the unripe fruit has been stored for several days, but it is either not ripe or already overripe, so it has rotted and blackened. After many investigations, we found that the emergence of this common problem is closely related to the unprofessional handling during the importer's circulation process, which leads to breaks in the cold chain, lack of refrigeration during open-air transactions in traditional wholesale markets, limited knowledge of avocado shelf management in fruit stores, and room-temperature display. Improving post-harvest processing technology is particularly important to solve this market pain point. To ensure the quality of ready-to-eat avocados, not only are professional modern ripening equipment and supporting cold chain packaging and transportation required, but also experienced ripening and distribution technicians. To solve this problem, our automated avocado ripening center ripens imported fruit locally, ensuring that consumers can eat them immediately after purchase without waiting, and each ready-to-eat avocado has a soft, glutinous, and smooth texture, improving the consumer experience," Ms. Shi explained.
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"Since entering the Chinese market in 2017, Mr. Avocado has been focusing on channel construction and consumer education for ready-to-eat avocados, continuously deepening distribution channels and awareness campaigns, and has successfully changed the eating habits and cognitive perceptions of Chinese consumers. At present, four ripening centers have been established in Beijing, Shanghai, Dongguan, and Chengdu, and we have equipped them with 10 regional warehouses, building a cold chain distribution network covering the whole country," Ms. Shi said. "The East China Ripening Center, which was recently put into operation, adopts the latest international mainstream ripening control technology, allowing us to accurately handle avocados from different production areas and at various ripeness stages. We have customized the equipment configuration and process design of the new ripening center according to the consumption characteristics and supply needs of East China customers."
At the same time, as the Peruvian production season approaches, one of Mr. Avocado's key shareholders, Mission Produce—a leading global avocado supplier, has made supply preparations at the origin. "Multiple containers of high-quality avocados will be shipped to China every week to ensure that the ripening center has a stable source of raw materials," said Ms. Shi.
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Looking ahead, Mr. Avocado plans to further expand its ripening capacity across China to meet growing consumer demand. "We are evaluating the construction of new ripening centers in more cities to continuously improve service density and distribution efficiency," Ms. Shi said.
