"Chile will be facing many challenges in the next kiwifruit campaign"

Chile closed the kiwifruit campaign with a series of commercial challenges for Chilean producers, as according to Carlos Cruzat, of the Kiwi Committee, the increase in the world production of this fruit will become a reality in the coming years. "This campaign, we started a little later, in the first place, because the fruit's ripening in the southern hemisphere was delayed and, secondly, because the European producing countries, like Greece and Italy, had a great production. The European campaign finished 2 months later than normal, with large volumes, so at first we had to look for alternative destinations," he affirmed.

Also, European exporters were forced to go to markets where they did not use to enter, and this caused the Chilean fruit to clash with the volumes coming from Europe. "We reduced the volumes shipped to Europe from more than 50% to 37%, but this allowed us to have great growth in Asia. For example, in China our exports increased by 154% compared to last year," highlighted Cruzat.

This year, Chile had the great challenge of implementing methodologies to tackle the markets, but the kiwifruit business is part of the new "superfood" trends. "Given that this scenario will remain stable, we believe that these volumes will continue to be present in the following years. We will have to enter markets that have great potential for growth, like India and South East Asia, where European fruit does not arrive in large quantities yet," added the representative.

"This 2017, we will begin in mid-March. Right now, it is already clear that other fruits will have an earlier start of the productive period, so we will probably also see the same happening for kiwifruit. In any case, this is a fruit that can be kept in storage, so there shouldn't have to be much of an impact on its marketing, as long as we know how to handle it properly. Although it is a bit early to make predictions, this year there was very good budding and high fertility, so we believe that we should have volumes similar to those of the previous season," he concluded.

For more information:
Carlos Cruzat
Kiwi Committee
T: +56 224724783
E: ccruzat@comitedelkiwi.cl
www.comitedelkiwi.cl