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Chilean cherries poised for huge growth
Global Cherry Summit webinar hears how the country could be exporting up to 200m cartons within a decade
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Chile could double – or even triple – its current cherry export volume by 2030 according to Claudio Vial, general manager of Ranco Cherries.
Speaking at a webinar organised by the Global Cherry Summit this week, Vial noted that the country is on course to export between 145m and 200m cartons of cherries within a decade, depending on the future rate of new plantings and productivity.
However, there was consensus among the panellists that focusing on quality, rather than quantity, was the best way of ensuring the future success of the industry.
Despite the challenges of the campaign, Chile exported a record volume of cherries
Chile has the biggest cherry industry in the southern hemisphere. In 2020 it had the hemisphere s biggest planted area (more than 56,000 hectares in production) and the biggest export volume. According to expectations, the number of planted hectares will continue to increase in 2021. We broke another record last year as we exported more than 70 million boxes of cherries, i.e. more than 350 million kilos, mainly to the Asian market, stated Carlos Tapia, Avium s technical director and a specialist in cherry production.
However, the recent season has been marked by three major complications: a lack of labor, delays in shipments, and rumors of the detection of COVID-19 in a box of Chilean cherries in China. These factors had negative consequences and, despite the record volume exported, there were clear economic effects.