Years of wading through governmental red tape and pest risk trials has finally paid off for Peru’s Hass avocado industry as the first container-load of fruit not subject to cold treatment fumigation successfully delivered to Long Beach, California in the US in mid-August.
The avocados were grown, packed and shipped by Lima-based Sociedad Agricola Drokasa S.A. (Agrokasa S.A) under the 'La Catalina' brand and imported by Pacific Produce, LLC.
Although the Peruvian Hass avocado season is in its latter stages, there is expected to be a flurry of shipments arriving on both coasts of the US over the next two months.
'Agrokasa plans to ship as much as 120 full (sea) containers of Hass avocados to the US market arriving through mid-October,' said Isabel Tavera, operations manager for Pacific Produce. 'The Peruvian industry as a whole may bring in as much as 500 containers before the season concludes.'
According Tavera, Agrokasa had last year attempted to export its fruit under the cold treatment protocols that required near-freezing temperatures during the transit to the US, but noted that the temperature turned out to be too harsh.
'However SENASA (Peru’s National Agricultural Sanitary Service) had already been conducting trials involving fruit flies for two years and was finally able to prove scientifically to US plant-quarantine authorities that Hass avocados grown and packed under commercial conditions were not hosts,' she said.
'They presented their evidence to USDA-APHIS last year and we received word that market access was granted at the end of July. Our first container arrived on August 15th with excellent results.'
The full story will appear in the October/November issue of Americafruit Magazine
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