Spain: Huelva closes first Orri campaign with 7 million kilos marketed

Following a public regularization campaign, the producers of the protected mandarin variety Orri, of the province of Huelva, have managed to market 7 million kilos in their first campaign, which is 29% of the 25.5 million kilos marketed by the more than 400 producers in Spain. By provinces, 27% of this production corresponds to the province of Valencia, 14% to Murcia, 10% to the province of Castellon, 9% to Alicante, 6% to Almería and almost 5% to Seville.

The marketing data for this first campaign place the Orri variety as the mandarin with the best market return, reaching a sale price at origin of between 0.8 and 1.2 Euro per kilo.

This information was recently released at the first meeting of the Orri Running Committee (ORC), an association formed by more than 400 producers of this variety, where they unanimously approved the results of their first season, which came to a close on 31 August 2016.

Furthermore, the ORC, with the collaboration of its partners, has made improvements that have made it possible to perfect the variety's identification system. This includes the full implementation of the system for the next campaign, with the possibility of filling out online forms on the website (www.orcspain.es), a reduction of the paperwork as soon as the Orri label can be used by authorised marketers and the implementation of a simpler method for the application of the Orri logo on pallets.

As regards the promotion and funding of legal actions for the control and defence of the Orri variety, action has been undertaken for possible irregular exploitation in 20 cases during 2016, corresponding to approximately 32,000 trees (in addition to the more than 30,000 trees already removed previously). During the forthcoming campaign, it is planned to put in place control measures by customs at the borders to prevent the marketing of illegal fruit from third countries in the European Union.

Another of the main actions carried out this year is the implementation of the application Orri App, which makes use of a GPS system to identify plantations authorised to grow the variety. In just two and a half months, more than 700 consultations have been made regarding the legality of plantations through this application. It has been found that the presence of irregular plantations of the Orri variety is very small, since only 6% of those surveyed were unregulated.