Fresh Del Monte CEO Mohammad Abu-Ghazaleh highlights escalating disease pressures threatening global banana industry stability

Fresh Del Monte Produce chairman and CEO Mohammad Abu-Ghazaleh has once again spoken out over the increased threat level to global banana supplies.

Abu-Ghazaleh first talked about the challenges facing the banana business during the company’s second-quarter earnings call in July.

Today (29 October), he used Fresh Del Monte’s third-quarter earnings call to highlight the “mounting pressure” on the industry, which has only intensified in the months following his previous comments.

He again pointed to the spread of Fusarium Wilt Tropical Race 4 (TR4), which he said had been confirmed in Ecuador – one of the world’s largest banana producers – marking a “serious escalation” in Latin America after previous detections in Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela.

”It is a highly contagious, soil-borne disease with no cure, and it is already destabilising the region,” Abu-Ghazaleh told the call.

”In Peru, where TR4 was first detected in 2021, the impact is noticeable in the Piura region – the country’s leading producer of organic bananas.

”A recent study found that 45 per cent of farms are already infected, and about 10 per cent have been completely eradicated,” he explained.

Small growers are under mounting pressure as Black Sigatoka spreads and TR4 reaches new countries, Abu-Ghazaleh outlined, and with already thin margins across the sector, rising disease-control costs are making survival “increasingly difficult”.

”At Fresh Del Monte, we’ve been preparing for these challenges for years,” he continued. ”We’re advancing work on TR4-resistant banana varieties – an essential step toward long-term resilience – but solutions of this scale take time.

He pointed out that growers are taking every possible measure to control these diseases, but each year these efforts are becoming more demanding as the situation further deteriorates – placing new financial strains on growers across the industry.

”We’re seeing the impact clearly in Costa Rica,” Abu-Ghazaleh commented. ”As of August 2025, production in the industry has declined 22 per cent year-over-year – which is roughly 18mn boxes lost – with most of that loss stemming directly from Black Sigatoka.

”For a country long recognised for its agricultural efficiency, that’s a significant and concerning decline – one that inevitably drives costs higher across the industry.”

Demand for bananas remains strong, but what is shifting is the balance between supply and demand, and the underlying economics of the category.

Understanding that shift is essential for everyone involved, he urged.

”Sustaining this category over the long term will require closer alignment across the value chain, ensuring that pressures in the fields are understood – and shared – throughout the supply chain. ”The farmer can no longer absorb these rising costs,” said Abu-Ghazaleh.

“It’s easy to take the banana for granted – simple, familiar, always there. But behind that simplicity lies one of agriculture’s most coordinated and collaborative supply chains.

”Protecting it is our shared responsibility – and if we don’t act collectively to support growers and stabilise this supply chain, we risk seeing this fruit – and the livelihoods behind it – disappear before our eyes,” he warned.

”That reality weighs heavily on me and drives much of our focus today.”