Miguel Ángel Curiel, vice president and general director at Driscoll's Mexico pointed out

"Today the berry industry represents 15% of Mexico's agricultural exports and will continue to be an industry that is growing"

The 2022 Mexican barries season begins at the end of August. 98% of Driscoll's exports go to North America to countries such as the United States and Canada. Only 2% of shipments are destined for Europe and Asia.

This year one of the world's leading companies in the production and marketing of berries, Driscoll's, has made several acquisitions. One of them, in mid-June, was the purchase of Berry Gardens Growers Limited (BGG), the largest cooperative of berry growers in the United Kingdom.

Then, in July, the company reached an agreement to acquire Haygrove Africa Trading, a subsidiary of Haygrove Heaven. This year, Driscoll's will continue to strengthen ties with various organizations, confirmed Miguel Ángel Curiel, vice president and general manager at Driscoll's Mexico.

"What has been done is to strengthen these relationships through this formalization, purchases of operations in both Africa and the United Kingdom."

Regarding the purchase of Haygrove Africa Trading, Miguel Ángel Curiel said: "There was already an exclusive production and marketing relationship before and what we are doing is strengthening the objective of being a global leader in blueberries, having a permanent base in Africa, that complements the program we have from the southern hemisphere”.

Regarding the challenges for the industry, which is facing a logistics crisis and rising inflation in almost all countries, the vice president and general director at Driscoll's Mexico explained that "one of the challenges is the availability of labor , which is an important issue for the industry. Secondly, there is the increase in the costs of inputs such as fertilizers, materials for the installation of tunnels. Global logistics has hit the production and plantation programs, where the market has been short on fertilizer, substrates."

“The berry industry, like Driscoll's, has a great responsibility in the midst of this uncertain scenario. Today the berry industry represents 15% of Mexico's agricultural exports and will continue to be an industry that is growing."

As soon as the dollar rose, the expert commented: “In the case of Mexico there has been a very stable exchange rate. I had to participate in a conference where they told us about the prospects as soon as the exchange rate will be stable, but inflation will continue to rise. There are projections of 8% for Mexico, there will be an increase in the country's interest rate that will close more money availability. We are caught by the waist with what is happening in the United States, since our economic exchange is very large and dependent”.

Regarding the logistics crisis, Miguel Ángel Curiel indicated: “If we take into account that in Mexico there has been a gasoline subsidy, the cost of transportation has not increased as much compared to other regions. 98% of what we export to North America is overland, so we haven't had a supply chain disruption."

2022 berry season
The 2022 Mexican berry season begins in late August. 98% of Driscoll's exports go to North America to countries such as the United States and Canada. Only 2% of shipments are destined for Europe and Asia.

“We hope it will be a more normal season. We have been under the pressure of the La Niña phenomenon for two years, with dry conditions during the winter when we normally have winter rains in Mexico, which allows us to have better agroclimatic conditions,” said Miguel Ángel Curiel.

About the projections, the specialist pointed out; “Last season we finished at 200.000 tons. The industry must have ended up at 500 million tons or a little more. We project growth on this basis of 8% to 10%”

“We will have a very even growth between the different crops. Strawberries is the crop that represents almost 50% of our volume and will have a growth of 8% to 9%. In the rest of the crops we will stay in that range, there is not a big difference, that is, between 8 and 10%”.

Investment and innovation
The company is constantly investing, especially focused on genetic materials. “We have some of the most comprehensive programs globally across all crops. In all regions, especially in Mexico, we have been investing in improving our variety production system. We also continue to improve and perfect our cold chain, which is vital to deliver a quality product to the consumer, and we continue to make significant investments in Mexico,” said Miguel Ángel Curiel.

As for innovation, “our focus is to serve this North American consumer,” Curiel said, adding, “what we see as innovation is constantly going above and beyond the producer's standard of quality, flavor and value that our customer appreciates. The foregoing working in the different directions and attributes that the products can give, for example, flavor is number one. We also have sizes, packaging. Customers and consumers demand different value propositions. For us, they are still 80% product quality, flavor, and the rest is working on innovations that improve efficiency in harvesting, in the supply chain. We continue to make investments in very basic things that allow us to reduce the time from the field to the consumer, maintaining the post-harvest quality of the fruit. We are focused on improving our value proposition to the consumer.”

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