The Andalusian company will be one of the pioneers in stone fruit exports to China.
Royal, which already has important experience as a blueberry operator in China, will shortly start up its adventure with “stone” fruit.
José Gandía, chairman of SAT Royal acknowledges that “sending fruit long distance is a difficult adventure, but it is a new challenge for a company like ours, which historically has been closely involved in marketing abroad.”
In fact, only 5% of the company from Seville’s sales reach the Spanish market, but it has a strong presence on the European markets.
“Now the goal is to start up on the Chinese market with a very high quality product, sent by air, since at the moment there are no peach and nectarine varieties that maintain their flavour and quality during long distance journeys by ship,” the executive points out.
This is the opposite case to that of plums or pluots, which show very good results when shipped by sea. In fact, the company has already exported these fruits to Malaysia and Singapore.
Varieties with excellent flavour. The company from Seville has a wide range of varieties with a high level of flavour value and an excellent presence that aroused great interest at the Medfel trade fair.
“At the beginning of the season it is quite difficult to obtain yellow peaches with 10 or 12 brix degrees and we have already presented them at Perpignan, along with white nectarines, which maintained the same brix degrees.”
“Given this year’s circumstances, some chain stores were pleasantly surprised and they asked us to start working as soon as possible,” Gandía added.
Amongst Royal’s varieties, a series of yellow peaches produced by its own growers, available throughout May; other white peaches in May and June stand out and, amongst the sub-acid varieties, the white nectarines, also from the beginning of the season, stand out.
The company has its own productions in Seville, Huelva, Extremadura and Portugal, which allow it to work during the earliest phase of the campaign. Later on it works with associated producers from Murcia and Lerida. The end of the campaign is always associated with pluots, which are produced until November and December.
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