Del Monte makes the right moves

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Making the right moves

PICTURED—Mohammed Abbas, Fresh Del Monte

Mohammed Abbas, Fresh Del Monte’s senior vice-president for Asia Pacific, Middle East and North Africa, discusses the marketer’s response to the challenges of the past year, and to shifting trends in the banana trade.

by Liam O’Callaghan

@liamfruitnet comes from its teams spread across many countries. Those great eff orts spread our produce and fulfi lled market demand with consistent quality.

Fresh Del Monte has been making some major changes in its banana business. What are these changes and what do you hope to achieve by making them?

MA: Fresh Del Monte has spent years developing its banana sourcing strategy to cover numerous origins. With TR4 aff ecting plantations in the Philippines, we made bold moves to tap into new sources to support the Asian markets, which have been traditionally supplied by the Philippines along with Vietnam and Laos.

Over the past two years we managed to develop a consistent supply of bananas from our operations across CECAB (Colombia, Ecuador, Central America and Brazil). Now, Fresh Del Monte Guatemalan bananas have a strong presence in the Japanese markets. We are also developing trade for Costa Rican bananas into Korea. In Hong Kong, we are gradually introducing bananas from Panama.

There has been a slight shi in Asia’s banana trade over the past 12 months, with South-East Asian suppliers fi lling the gap le by declining exports from the Philippines. Will this trend continue and how is Fresh Del Monte positioned to respond?

MA: We do think this trend will continue and we strongly believe that Vietnam and Laos in particular will continue to grow in production.

We are closely monitoring the expansion plans of medium and large size farmers in these countries and are also pu ing plans in place to expand our production operations beyond the Philippines, but these are still in the early stages.

In what has been a year like no other, how has Fresh Del Monte’s banana business fared, particularly in Asia?

Mohammed Abbas: It has been a challenging year for all markets, not only Asia. The lockdowns, social distancing, decline of the hotel, restaurant and catering sector, and school closures had an impact on the banana business.

Despite this, we remained agile in our approach and worked around the situation by channelling our fruit to various destinations across Asia, the Middle East, and even the East Mediterranean.

The strength of Fresh Del Monte Asia accounted for 10 per cent of sales for Fresh Del Monte in 2019. Do you see this percentage growing? If so, where is this growth coming from?

MA: We are targeting further growth by diversifying our product range within the fresh produce category and the value-added segment in existing markets.

The major growth will be in penetrating new markets through collaborations in China, India, and other markets across Asia-Pacifi c. _