Consignments of fresh fruit and vegetables that were due to be shipped to Europe by troubled Israeli exporter Agrexco via a major new handling facility at the Port of Sète in France are at a standstill, following weeks of uncertainty over the future of the debt-laden company.
The facility, which was completed earlier this year and had originally been constructed to allow Agrexco to supply much of its annual 400,000 tonnes of fresh produce exports via France, a key market for the company.
Bernard Houillier, director of logistics operator Reefer Terminal Sète, the division of Italian giant GF Group which owns and operates the centre, and which handles all of Agrexco's fresh produce shipments to western Europe, told Eurofruit his staff were working to identify new suppliers which might be able to send their produce via the French port.
Until a few weeks ago, when Agrexco's severe debt situation and the threat of liquidation prompted the group to be put up for sale, Reefer Terminal had used the Sète facility to handle and redistribute Carmel-branded fresh fruit and vegetables supplied by Agrexco.
'At the moment, the Sète terminal is working with a weekly line operated by CMA-CGM/Marfret to transport bananas from Martinique,' Houillier explained.
'We are also working to find other product volumes which we can unload to replace the Agrexco ones,' he added.
Agrexco began sending its shipments to western Europe via France in May 2011, following the completion of a brand new produce handling terminal in Sète run by Reefer Terminal, which invested a total of €25.4m in establishing the centre.
The exporter had previously switched its entry point from Marseilles in southern France to Vado in the Italian region of Liguria at the beginning of 2009, having failed to reach an agreement with the French port authorities on the amount paid for port-side handling services.
However, direct entry into the French market was the preferred option for Agrexco, which sells a significant proportion of its exported produce in France.
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