Chilean Walnut Comission launches walnut Quality Standard
Chile, as a result of the industry’s growth in the past years, is currently the main exporter of walnuts in the Southern Hemisphere and the third exporter worldwide. This has generated the need to provide tools that will grant the product a high-ranking support. This is why the Chilean Walnut Commission (ChWC) has recently launched a Walnut Quality Standard, with the objective of standardizing the quality of this fruit to commercialize a homogenous product. With this news standard, the importer will know exactly what to expect and demand, when it comes to quality, which adds in turn transparency to the Chilean walnut industry.
To the Secretary for Agriculture Luis Mayol, this is a tool that will generate a distinguishing element to exporters and will allow them to maintain the leading role accomplished thus far by Chilean walnuts in international markets, plus it also bestows a guarantee of trust and reliability to the importer. “This Quality Standard will not only be a guarantee of trust for importers, it will also become the distinguishing element which will be positioning the Chilean walnut abroad.” He also commented that after the 2012 tour, together with the Chilean Walnut Commission they made a commitment to continue expanding in international markets and improving quality; since “we know that Chile has comparative advantages and, in spite of the distance, we are sure they are attractive and competitive.”
Meanwhile, the Executive President of the ChWC, Andres Rodriguez pointed out that “to us it is fundamental to be able to rely on this Quality Standard which sets the basis on which our exporters can work.”
This standard specifies the different parameters for color, defects, labels and weight, among other factors that have to be considered. The standard was developed by identifying the best practices existing today in the Chilean industry, plus the highest standards internationally in countries such as the USA, and in Europe. “One of the main innovations in this standard is that it adapts to the different processes that exist in Chile today, since it offers guidelines not only for walnuts cracked by hand, which is the ones we usually have, but it also adds parameters for mechanically cracked walnuts, which is a new product in the mix that Chile offers. On the other hand, the Chilean Walnut Commission has developed, complementing this standard, a color chart so as not to depend on those usually used in Chile developed by the US or the UNECE,” Rodriguez explains.
This standard besides the parameters for shelled and in-shell walnuts, cracked manually and mechanically, certain food safety certifications must be complied such as, the food safety permission issued by the government and the HACCP certification.
This foundation that established the industry’s quality standard was a result of the efforts of the Chilean Walnut Commission to keep up the good image that Chilean walnuts have reached in international markets over the past years, specially at a time when the industry is growing 15% per year.
For more information
Chilean Walnut
Andrés Rodríguez S.
Phone: +56 2 4724783
Mobile: +56 9 79577251
www.chileanwalnut.com
