The Minister of Agriculture, Carlos Furche, visited the Los Nobles plant in Codegua, in the Region of O'Higgins, accompanied by the national director of the SAG, Oscar Camacho, the general manager of the Association of Fruit Exporters (ASOEX), Miguel Canala-Echeverria, and Juan Carlos Sepúlveda, the general manager of Fedefruta. Los Nobles was one of the first plants to export nectarines to the People's Republic of China, after the Asian country confirmed it had authorized the entry of Chilean stone fruit to their country on Saturday February 4. The news was highly anticipated by Chile and was made possible thanks to the joint work of the public and private sector.
It should be noted that the SAG was conducting inspections of nectarines to that market while they were waiting for the authorization so that the products were ready to be exported. This measure allowed the country to make the first shipment of nectarines to the Asian country immediately after Saturday's announcement.
The Minister of Agriculture stated that, "this is a long-standing aspiration of the Chilean fruit sector. China is a market that will become a very important destination for our nectarines production and this achievement is a joint effort between the SAG, the Chinese authorities, and the private sector through the association of exporters."
ASOEX's general manager said that "Chile exports about 7 million boxes of nectarines to the world, and we estimate that we will export about 50% of that to China starting next season (80% of the white pulp varieties and 30% of the yellow pulp varieties). We expect to achieve shipments of 3.5 million boxes with an estimated FOB value of US $ 55 million. Another important aspect to bear in mind is that the opening of the Chinese market will allow better distributing this fruit to different markets, generating better global returns that will be higher than the current ones, which amount 65 million dollars per season."
The protocol for the export of nectarines to China was signed in November 2016, during the visit of the President of China, Xi Jinping, to Chile. This allowed the producers and exporting sector to start carrying out actions to comply with the requirements agreed with the Asian country. However, in order to initiate exports, China carried out a visit to Chile in January to verify compliance with this protocol. The visit concluded successfully and resulted in the opening of this important market for Chilean fruit.
The nectarine export season started in December last year, which is why the export sector was so interested in starting shipments of this fruit to China before the end of the export season. ASOEX estimates that Chile will ship about 300,000 boxes of nectarines with an estimated value of 4 million dollars to China this season.
Apart from nectarines China has already authorized the entry of Chilean blueberries, cherries, plums, apples, kiwi, avocado, table grapes, and shelled walnuts, which makes it one of the main destination markets for Chilean agricultural products. In addition, Chile has already begun talks to achieve the entry of pears to the Chinese market.
Source: simfruit.cl
