FGH Agribusiness Consulting: “Our plan is to explore the organic banana market in China”

Bananas produced in Mexico are grown all year round, though the first quarter of the year usually sees lower productions than the other quarters. “To ensure a steady supply throughout the year, producers will try to schedule new harvesting areas for this period to compensate,” says Audee Rios Canobbio of Coliman, “but sometimes it is difficult to control.” This year, the Mexican banana producer is looking toward expanding their presence in China now that protocols have been put into place to open up the Chinese market to Mexican bananas.

Coliman grows their bananas on multiple farms in the Mexican states Colima and Chiapas. The majority of the company’s banana production is organic. Canobbio explains: “Currently, 86% of our production is organic and all of the organic banana production occurs on our Colima farms. We are constantly working on expanding our organic production, and the current number is a 10% expansion compared with the previous year.”

The market for organic bananas has remained pretty stable over the past few years, according to Canobbio. She says: “The organic market is still growing, but at a lower rate. Some markets are more mature with regard to organic produce now, but there are also other specific markets that are still developing. The Japanese market, for example, is still growing and emerging. For the pricing, though, generally the pricing of organic fruit in the markets is stable.”

The company strives to grow the most socially and environmentally conscious organic banana in the world, and Canobbio explains a bit about their process: “First of all, we try to focus on improving the living conditions of the communities where we grow, starting with educational projects, health programs.”

Coliman’s main export markets are in currently in the U.S., Japan, Europe, and South Korea, but they are working on expanding into China in the near future. Canobbio shares: “One of our goals this year is to get organic certified for the Chinese norm. Now that there is a protocol in place to export bananas from Mexico to China, we are looking forward to exploring this new market and opportunity.”

While the company is working on attaining the organic certification that will allow them to export their bananas to China, they have already begun exporting their conventional bananas. “We sent our first shipment with conventional bananas last week, in week three of 2020,” Canobbio says. She adds: “Our plan, though, is to explore the organic market there,” Canobbio concludes.

To support companies and producers with responsible and sustainable practices, FGH International Agribusiness Consulting, offers agricultural consulting and business services solutions that merge sound agronomic principles with economic business objectives. Our value proposition not only lies in agricultural consulting, but also in business service solutions within Latin America. We focus on maximizing our partners ROI, consistent with cost-effective and sustainable agronomic practices.We work in partnership with first class agribusiness solution providers, developed by and for sector commodities stakeholders such as banana, sugar cane, palm oil, horticulture, coffee, cocoa, beef, etc., despite language, country, region. We provide solutions that enables producers and processors not only to keep track of performance, but also to set realistic, attainable goals and to elaborate improvement plans for each stage of their journey to a more sustainable production. We help them go above and beyond certification/verification levels, creating greater visibility of the progress made over time by (non-)certified/verified producers; allowing to roadmap every stage of their agribusiness value chain.To find out more about our solutions or to share learnings to support suppliers on their journey to excellence, please feel free to contact us, FGH’s International Agribusiness, Latin America's leading agribusiness consulting firm.