Blueberries, from Cantabria to the world

13/07/2015

Time passes fast and Campoberry, an agrifood company based in the town of Güemes (Bareyo) has spent in just six years of planting their first blueberry bushes to have planned to produce this year more than one hundred thousand kilos of this fine and exquisite fruit of the forest that has some nutritional and healthy properties like few known foods.

The entrepreneurial adventure of Eduardo López, Juan Rueda, Pedro Ortiz and Montse Herrero was born linked to the important weight that blueberries have in the diet of the inhabitants of the Anglo-Saxon countries and to the great possibilities of the Cantabrian coastal strip -soils and climate- produce a cranberry of outstanding quality.

They started with a few hectares in Güemes, but now they have more than 80 planted and various projects in other areas of the region and neighboring communities to close a group of producers with a hundred hectares, and complete the circle of profitability thanks to which they are able to assume the whole process, from giving the approval to the suitability of a farm to plant blueberries until its commercialization and export.

Eduardo and Juan are at the head of the entire organization, which at this time moves almost a hundred people in the hard and delicate tasks of picking the cranberry one by one in different farms. With the maturation of the fruit, the work in Güemes is frantic. A new packaging machine facilitates the process before completing the pallets that then go to the most disparate places on the planet. A refrigerated truck loads five pallets in the afternoon for the Netherlands; other orders have been sent to Barcelona, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany and the Middle East. The phone does not stop ringing and those responsible for Campoberry confess with the satisfaction of the job well done that have all the production sold.

The timing is key, since blueberries from Cantabria now have hardly any rival in Spain because the large productions from the southern part of Spain supply the market mainly from January to May. And in quality, this time the north wins over the south, as Eduardo points out: «Our blueberries are of a contrasted quality, much tastier, more natural, here we have the humidity, the temperature and the general climate that this shrub needs. An in situ tasting of the fruit leaves no room for doubt. Magnificent".

The cranberry, preserved in cold, has a range of consumption that easily reaches twenty days. In raw it is delicious, but it also has many gastronomic applications, in jams and as garnish for some meats or fish. In juice, smoothies or liquors, it also has a lot of acceptance.

Challenges

Entrepreneurially, one of the challenges of Campoberry is to enter the British market, something like the mecca of cranberry consumption. Another objective is to have a product for most of the year, with a stable price and a very high quality. And, in third place, the people in charge of this Cantabrian company aspire to make the cranberry more and better known in the region itself.

Consumption in Spain is still very limited and in Cantabria the firm Campoberry has its tubs of 125 grams in supermarkets of Lupa and BM, in Txiki fruits and also work with the Deluz Group restaurants.

Source: Eldiariomontanes.es