The baby carrots imported actually come from the giant carrots harvested in Mexico. Due to a lack of investment, the production of the jumbo carrot is not a great business in Mexico.
The Mexican company, GMM Import & Export, produces jumbo carrot in Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato, which it then exports to the United States and Canada, where they are made into baby carrots.
"It returns to Mexico basically through transnational companies that manage their own brands, but it is actually a Mexican product," said Raul Alvarez, vice president of GMM Import & Export. Some of these brands are Great Value at Sam's Club and Kirkland at Costco, added Alvarez.
Mexico can't complete the added value chain because it doesn't have the infrastructure to make the cuts, said Roberto Chora, president of the company.
Building the factory where the jumbo carrots are cleaned and packed required an investment of 2.5 million dollars, but buying the cutter machine to make baby carrots would cost a million dollars, he said.
Chora said they should invest in this business, as demand for baby carrots in the world is growing at a rapid pace.
Proof of this expansion in consumption is Mexico's increased production of jumbo carrots.
This year's production volume for this variety is expected to amount to 11,000 tons, almost twice the 6,000 tons achieved last year; said production would amount to 7.9 million dollars, he said.
60 percent of the national production is estimated to return to the country as baby carrots, the rest is sold in countries where it is cut and others like Belgium, Spain, France and Italy.
There are two types of large carrots, jumbo carrots, which can measure up to 20 centimeters, and superjumbo carrots, which measure up to 35 centimeters.
To achieve the size and uniformity of these carrots, and thus of the baby carrots, producers chose to import seeds from Belgium and to pay greater attention to the planting techniques; something that doesn't happen in the production of the average sizes.
Source: eldiariodechihuahua.mx