The Chilean fruit season closes with a new record

Chile exported a total of 2,935 million kilos of fruit in the 2017/2018 fruit season, surpassing the last record of 2,840 million kilos achieved in the 2012/2013 season, reported Fedefruta based on a report released by IQonsulting.

According to Gonzalo Salinas from IQonsulting, the 2017/2018 campaign presented particular variations, such as the historical exports of cherries, blueberries, nectarines, and plums.

According to the executive of IQonsulting, even though exports were led by apples and table grapes in the 2017/2018 season, they were “complemented by a greater number of products that had a much smaller share five years ago, such as cherries, blueberries, nuts, plums, and nectarines.”

Salinas also said that five seasons had passed since the previous record was established and said that the frost of the 2013/2014 campaign had affected stone fruit and kiwi, generating a 12% drop in the sector’s total exports.

He also said that the climatic problems in the northern regions of Chile had strongly affected table grapes, avocados, and part of the citrus fruit. In addition, he said that there had been a decrease in apple shipments for the 2014/2015 season, which slowly recovered until the last campaign.

Shipments of table grapes and apples, which are some of the most exported species, significantly decreased and have been unable to return to their maximum volumes.

In the past decade both species accounted for 65% of Chilean exports, a number that fell to 57%, and 51% in the 2017/2018 season, Salinas said.

The kiwi, which until the 2016/2017 campaign had been the third most important product for more than 10 seasons with exports that exceeded 200,000 kilos, failed to achieve the volumes exported in the record campaign and was relegated to the fourth place in the ranking, Salinas stated.

Fruit exports to Asia increased by 30.4%
The 2017/2018 season closed with the shipment of 2,776,903 kilos to various countries, i.e. 6.2% more than the previous season. Chile exported 625,453 kilos to the Asian market, i.e. 30.4% more than in the previous year.

China is the main destination with 61.6% of the total Chilean shipments to the region.

Source: marcotradenews.com

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