Chile’s Gesex and Pura Fruit have agreed to consolidate their agricultural and commercial projects in Peru. The new venture, Pura Gesex, creates one of the biggest table grape exporters in Peru.
The alliance will allow both companies to achieve significant cost savings, improve efficiency, and streamline their service to distributors in North America, Europe and Asia.
Since being acquired more than a year ago by the Costa Verde group, Pura Fruit has sought to position itself as a high quality fruit company.
Gesex, meanwhile, is continually working to strengthen its operations in Peru, where it operates as Defrusa.
“We realised that together we could consolidate our agricultural and commercial projects more quickly and with a solid structure, integrating agricultural production, with packaging operations, technical handling and marketing in the destination markets,” said Christian Gwynne, CEO of Gesex.
“We are convinced that alliances empower companies, make them more robust and allow them – as in this case – to be better businesses and strengthen their business relationships with customers, also benefiting their employees.”
Felipe Arriagada, CEO of Costa Verde, added: “Being together implies not only producing fruit in Peru but also looking for the best table grape that can be produced, placing it in the markets where it should be, and complementing this with a good way of operating, working, sharing experiences, technologies, innovation and development”.
Pura Gesex has 2,200ha in Peru, of which more than 1,100ha are planted, all with new licensed varieties, and the rest are still available for planting.
Over the next three years, the new venture will produce an estimated 6m cartons of grapes with a potential sales value of US$120m, placing it among the top three table grape producers in Peru.
Gesex Chile has 2,800ha of production and markets around 8.5m cartons of grapes a year.
Together, the two company’s output will reach 14.5m cartons with a potential sales value of US$270m, allowing them to become a ‘one stop shop’ in the Southern Hemisphere grape business.
According to Gesex’s commercial manager, Manuel Aspillaga, not many companies today control their own fruit production in both Chile and Peru.
“This will allow us to serve our customers and especially our supermarket programmes in the US, UK. and Europe, as well as our commercial network in Asia, a market that has shown great potential and dynamism, in a more complete and comprehensive way, with a first-class product and granting the promise of quality and service that has always stood out for us,” he said.
“It means that we will be able to give them a global and extended solution over time, with which we can build a long-term, solid and profitable relationship.”
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