The end of Ebro Valley's cherry season in Tarragona, Spain, which started on 21 April, will arrive on the first week of July. The campaign's results so far have been deemed positive.
"We started the campaign with some settling problems in the early varieties because of rainfall in early April, but as the weeks passed the weather improved, with temperatures that have contributed to the good quality of the fruit," explains David Manero, one of Cerima Cherries' partners. "We consider it a good campaign with reasonable prices, around the average level of recent years," he adds.
With over 350 hectares of plantations in the county of Ribera d'Ebre, Cerima Cherries is devoted exclusively to the production and marketing of cherries. The company plans to remain committed to this product and to continue growing in the coming years. "Cerima's added value is our specialisation and expertise with cherries. The topography and microclimate of Ribera d'Ebre provide us both an early and an extensive production schedule."
"We currently have over 150 hectares in full production and expect other young plantations to start bearing fruit within the next 2 or 3 years, by which time we will probably continue planting," points out David. "Along this growth process, we are also expanding our facilities, and this includes the acquisition of second optical sorter."
Although its partners have been producing cherries for 25 years, it is 10 years since Cerima started exporting. "We decided that exporting was the future for us; in fact, prices in the domestic market have been declining in the case of early cherries. We started in Europe, with the UK still as our main market. We later entered the Middle East and for the past three years we have been shipping to Asia by air."
"We want to continue consolidating our position in the European markets and increasing our presence in Asia, taking advantage of the fact that we will soon double our production volumes. We currently export to Singapore and China through Hong Kong and we expect export protocols to develop between Spain and China in the short term," he says.
Under the CERIMA brand, the Catalan company labels globally selected cherry varieties from California and Washington, in the United States, or from Summerland, Canada. "This business is actually a long learning process; that is why, during the off-season, we travel to places like Chile, Argentina and California to share experiences with producers and packers from those areas."
For more information:
David Manero
Cerima Cherries
T:+34 977 418 346
M:+34 696 869 388
[email protected]
www.cerimacherries.com
