Vital Berry busca nuevos mercados ante la actual coyuntura

En esta nota de Fresh Markets vemos como las comercializadoras buscan distintas estrategias comerciales para atacar canales en nuevos países. Según la nota esperan que el pico de oferta de arándanos se de en 4-5 años.

In 1989, Vital Berry was established as an association of raspberry producers, with the objective to improve the market channels to foreign countries, they focused mainly on the US market. Today, Vital Berry trades all kind of berries from diverse places around the world such as Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, USA, Netherlands and soon from Romania, in addition to a line of exotics.

Mr. Felipe Juillerat, Marketing Manager at Vital Berry recognizes that on the supply side, blueberry production is increasing and expect it will arrive to a maximum in 4-5 years. Due to this increasing supply, prices and returns are expected to fall. Although, during last years returns where high, due to insufficient supply to equate the increasing demand. Today, the situation is different and there are moments when supply overpasses the demand.

“It is necessary to make differentiation of production. The focus should be on quality, added value, market differentiation and efficient use of resources and sustainability. The later concept seems to be very important among our customers time ago, and Vital Berry as organization has accepted it as a priority in its strategy”.

The strategy by Vital Berry seeing the saturation of the market in blueberries declares Mr. Juillerat "is to focus efforts in non-traditional markets, such as China, South Korea or Hong Kong even in markets which could be considered competitors of the Southern hemisphere as Australia and New Zealand.

In US, the strategy appoints to increase consumption, since price is stabilizing to levels where more consumers could access. In Latin America, there are alternatives like Brazil, but phytosanitary barriers could be an obstacle. Paradoxically, there are no sanitary issues from the demanding markets in Europe or the US".

At the moment 70% of Vital Berry exports concentrate on blueberries with a sustained increasing. Raspberries stagnated a few, therefore this pushes to develop new varieties. The R&D team from Vital Berry is in constant research. Blackberry production is starting to be cultivated with own plantations in Mexico, due to its production quality and the proximity to one of the main destination markets: USA.

Vital Berry project to obtain all the requested certifications by its customers EurepGAP (GlobalGAP), Nature's Choice and foreseeing the increasing niche of organics it expects in 2 years to transform 10% of the total production into organics. During this week starts the campaign of blueberries with the associated producers from Florida in the US, which shows the high potential to produce in different origins from this company based on Chile.
Fuente Fresh Markets
Email: mailto:fjuillerat@vitalberry.cl