Apple producers from Canatlán threatened to throw their fruit to the river because they are being offered 35 cents per kilo of this product. "We prefer to throw it away than give it away," said the producers.
Rodrigo Retana said the price of gravel apple, which is used by the industry to make juices, fell to 35 cents per kilo this week, when last week it was between 55 and 75 cents.
Other producers also stated that the company that was buying their apples had suddenly lowered their price this week by almost half, from 55 cents to 35.
Thus, the producers threatened to throw about 12,000 tons of apples into the river instead of giving them away to the Valle Redondo company, which is making a multimillion dollar business with the companies engaged in the preparation of industrial juices.
The 55 cents that the producers were being paid was a low price, but they eventually accepted it, Retana said. However, 35 cents is no longer tolerable, he stated.
Another company in the area, the Juguera Canatlán Company, used to buy the apples to make juice, and was paying 75 cents per kilo. However, Antonio Galvan, director of the company, said they had stopped buying apples because they didn’t have the infrastructure to grind more apples and store the juice until it was sold to the industry.
Canatlán’s apple production amounted to some 30,000 tons of apples, i.e. 1.2 million 25-kilo boxes of apples.
60 percent of this production was destined for the supermarkets or greengrocers; the remaining 40 percent for industrial use.
Source: La Jornada