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n EXPANDING PRODUCTION AREAS
Camet Trading, a subsidiary of multi- national Westfalia Fruit International, South Africa, that is based in Lima, Peru, continues to develop commercial orchards with its associate producers, providing them with plants, fertilizers and technical assistance year-round.
“Following this strategy, we are currently developing 200 hectares in 2019, and we plan to increase this to 300 hect- ares from 2020 onwards,” Enrique Camet, managing director of Camet. “We think Peru will continue to plant 1,000 to 1,500 hectares per year in the coming years.”
Camet emphasizes the importance of lifting supply during the front and tail ends of the Peruvian avocado season from April to August.
“What is needed is to plant new varieties in new areas to expand this window in the early stage from February to March, and for the later harvest from September to October,” he says.
Jim Donovan, senior vice president of global sourcing of Mission Produce, says his company is currently working on new planting of another 1,300 hectares of avocados in Peru.
There is likely more planting to come, thanks to the Olmos mega-irrigation project in northern Peru, which is turning an arid region into an agricultural power by channeling water through a tunnel
under the Andes Mountain range. “Olmos is the latest project and is continuing to be planted out with various crops, one of which is avocados,” says Donovan. “Like others, Mission has purchased undevel- oped land and turned it into avocado, mango and blueberry farms.”
This feat of engineering was built by Brazilian multinational Odebrecht, which is at the center of Brazil’s ‘Car Wash’ scandal and has come under fire for the payment of bribes to four Peruvian ex-presidents.
To date, investigations in Peru have focused on the Southern Interoceanic Highway and Lima Metro Line 1 proj- ects, and Olmos does not appear to be affected, apart from protests last year in relation to a separate issue; the construction of a new city.
Meanwhile, agribusinesses are antici- pating similar hydro-infrastructure works for future growth, such as an expansion of the Chavimochic project that opened up the Trujillo region for asparagus farms in the 1990s, as well as Majes-Siguas II in Peru’s southern region.
“There are a lot of new plantings in Peru — a lot of trees that are only two to four years old that are going to start having higher yields,” notes Gahl Crane, sales director at Eco Farms Avocados in Temecula, CA.
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to the Southern Border states gives it a logis- tical advantage there and in the Midwest, but the growth of Peruvian avocados into new U.S. markets is still happening “slowly and steadily.”
“But I think a lot of it has to do with timing and sizes, and if Peru starts to have a more normal size curve with the 48s and 60s, kind of the core sizes, that’s going to bring additional opportunities in those markets,” he says.
“If you start scratching beyond the surface, you will see avocados from Peru not only on the East Coast but also in the Midwest, the South, the Southwest and even in the West,” says Equihua. “Just last year, Costco for weeks only carried Peruvian fruit in California, and this year we’re going to see the same thing because of the California off-year,” he says.
He says retailers will have access to the Avocados from Peru toolkit that includes classic marketing ideas such as POS, demos, radio, and all kinds of media including wrap buses, but there also will be “inspirational events” in
parallel to put avocados in a different light. “People always think the largest consump- tion date is Super Bowl Sunday, but in reality, at the same level you have the Fourth of July that can at times be even bigger for avocado consumption,” he says. “What we like to do is what we call experiential marketing; we create
experiences to create PR.”
Some new forays in 2019 include the inau-
gural World Avocado Cup Regatta, backed by the World Avocado Organization (WAO), which is also led by Equihua; a sponsoring of the inaugural Michelin Guide in California in conjunction with the WAO and the California Avocado Commission; a four-month June-to- September collaboration with the New York Jets; and a media partnership with Fox Network for the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
“The purpose of all these PR activities is to complement and amplify the programs that will be activated with our 2019 retail trade partners,” he says. pb