Cultivar Barcelona ripening room

Del Monte-branded bananas at Cultivar's new ripening facility

Spanish importer Cultivar has made a strategic move into the business of banana ripening and marketing.

The company recently completed work on state-of-the-art ripening rooms at its Barcelona facility, from where it plans to supply the entire Spanish market.

By the end of 2012, it said it expected to have sold some 2,000 tonnes of bananas, with volumes set to grow rapidly in 2013.

“As bananas are a basic product we felt it would improve the service we offer customers to include them in our product range,” the group’s marketing director Sandra Sitjar told Eurofruit.

“Initially, we’ll be handling bananas from Central America but we’re not ruling out the possibility of working with Canary Island bananas further down the line.”