Copefruit

COMPANY NAME

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PROFILE

COPEFRUT

THE CHERRY ON TOP OF SUSTAINABILITY

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COPEFRUT

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Copefrut

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PROFILE

Since 1955, Copefrut has been exporting some of the world’s finest fruit to all corners of the globe. But as climate concerns grow and the environmental impact of global warming continues to worsen, Copefrut has embarked on an ambitious sustainability project to safeguard its farmers, its business and, ultimately, to do its part for the greater good.

Carolina Prado, Innovation and Sustainability Manager at Copefrut, and Sustainability Leader, Alba Llavona, spoke to Richard Hagan about Copefrut’s sustainability journey.

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ased in Chile, Copefrut began life over 65 years ago as a classic farming cooperative. Various fruit farmers in the region combined their resources to export their products worldwide.

The initiative chose the name Coopefrut, in celebration of its business structure, and over the decades that followed, it enjoyed phenomenal success, one of the reasons for which was its ongoing emphasis on innovation. A particular highlight was its introduction of kiwi fruit to Chile – the first company to do so.

Today, Copefrut has continued to evolve as a major exporter of various fruit products, with customers in 65 countries worldwide and on nearly every continent, including Asia, Europe, the US and Latin America.

Rebranding and export specialisation In 1992, Coopefrut restructured, becoming Copefrut. And in 2019, the company underwent a further a rebrand. The new entity is not a grower and doesn’t own any fields.

Instead, the company’s focus is exclusively

on fruit exports, a role in which it continues to prove unrivalled expertise and market leadership.

But despite these changes, Carolina Prado, Copefrut’s Innovation and Sustainability Manager emphasised that the company hasn’t forgotten its roots.

“The company has enjoyed a cooperative farming soul from the beginning; it’s always had a very grower-oriented feel,” she explained. “We give our farmers the best service and access to the best technologies. A big team of agronomists supports them in the field and in the business of growing their fruit.”

She went on to highlight some of the company’s impressive numbers: Copefrut’s main revenue source is cherries, for which it is the second biggest exporter in Chile, boasting exports of 22 million kg annually.

Apple exports are the main export in terms of volume, with 46 million kg shipped every year. Other highlights of Copefrut’s export portfolio are blueberries (1.5 million kg per year), plums (7 million) and finally kiwi fruit (9 million).

Impressively, Copefrut’s product portfolio spans both summer and winter varieties and consequently, operations are able to run at full capacity year round.

Production is spread across the company’s three facilities which include a cuttingedge, extremely modern cherry processing line from Unitec.

Digging into sustainability According to Ms Prado, Copefrut’s innovative and comprehensive sustainability programme is seeing the company chart a brave new, exciting and marketleading course.

“It is defining our path in terms of sustainability for the next three years and it’s something that we’re taking very seriously,” she noted. “The policy is defining our vision for sustainability and how we’re impacting both the environment and our communities. We’re very proud to have this programme in place, it’s a very big step for us and it’s one that involves the whole company taking little steps all the time, towards that commitment.”

Copefrut

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COPEFRUT

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PROFILE

UNITEC Since 2008, UNITEC has been at Copefrut's side with its innovative technologies for handling and selecting the external and internal quality of cherries and, since 2016, with the technology for selecting blueberry quality.

During these 14 years of collaboration, UNITEC Cherry Vision and Blueberry Vision systems have proved to be valid allies of Copefrut in achieving its development goals.

With UNITEC, technology and innovation are combined with a specialised technical service, thanks to the UNITEC CHILE branch, founded in 2011 and grown steadily over the years, and to the other 19 operational branches of the Group located in the most important countries of the fruit and vegetable sector. UNITEC solutions guarantee consumer satisfaction and waste reduction by preventing unsuitable product to reach the fresh market.

UNITEC - we work for your results, for your customers and for a better world.

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Copefrut

The programme broadly focuses on three main areas: energy, water and materials.

Copefrut’s Sustainability Leader, Alba Llavona, explained that major efforts are currently underway at Copefrut to address and improve its energy efficiency.

“We’re implementing energy management systems at all of our facilities, based on ISO norms. The first challenge is to measure our energy consumption throughout our production process and from there, we’ll be able to implement energy saving initiatives at the points in our production where we’re consuming a lot of energy.”

Water is the second area of focus and it’s one that is particularly critical for waterscarce Chile.

“We’re at the beginning of reviewing our water usage,” Ms Llavona confirmed.

“We’re still conducting research to identify where we could reduce our water usage and after establishing that information, we’ll be able to start making changes. For now, we’re implementing a device to measure the water we’re currently utilising throughout our processes.

“It’s a well-known fact that Chile suffers from hydro stress and water scarcity,” she continued. “Water is important to our farmers, so it’s important to us.”

In relation to the third arm Copefrut’s sustainability policy – materials – the company has designed a recyclability index to measure the recyclability of all materials.

“We’re particularly concerned about plastics,” confirmed Ms Llavona. “As part of this programme, we’re looking at the types of materials we’re using and how additives like inks, glues or waxes affect recyclability. We are also examining the probability of the item actually being recycled at its destination.”

In collaboration with the University of Concepcion and the Agricultural Research Institute of Chile – INIA, Copefrut is participating in a project to investigate and develop compostable bags for its cherry exports.

This initiative seeks to develop biodegradable containers and films that retain the dehydration control and long shelf life qualities of plastic film.

She explained that the first step in achieving the company’s sustainability goals is simply communication.

“I use facts to try and communicate the importance of sustainability to all of the people in the company and in our value chain, but I have to use different ‘language’ with each group of stakeholders. I can talk about climate change, for example, but it’s a concept that not everybody understands.

So the trick is to translate big concepts into language that each group of people can understand.”

Ms Prado agreed: “It’s been very challenging for Alba to get people to understand how sustainability impacts them, so we need to be clever about how we make it relevant to each group. For example, we’ll emphasise to the directors that our customers, such as Walmart and Costco, demand sustainability. When talking with the growers, we’ve found that water is the key language. And for the rest of us, it’s the energy usage in our plants and the way we’ll benefit from improved energy efficiency through reduced energy costs.”

Securing the future through communication

Fruit on a mission

According to Ms Llavona, sustainability goes to the core of Copefrut’s future viability.

“We want to maintain the amount of fruit that we’re processing now, and to do that, the Chilean people must be able to produce that amount of fruit. So if we want to have a business in future, we need to have fruit, and in order to have fruit, we have to be more sustainable.”

Ms Prado emphasised how Copefrut’s sustainability programme will ultimately ensure that it can continue to deliver on its mission and its core values: “Our fruit is wonderful, healthy and tasty and we want to share it with the world and deliver what people ultimately want: juicier, crunchier, sweeter fruit. Our mission is to improve quality people’s lives with our fruit.”

The company actively researches new varieties and selections with which it hopes to keep impressing its global customers. It’s not an easy task, revealed Ms Prado.

“We’ve seen that some varieties don’t behave in Chile the way they do elsewhere, such as in the northern latitudes.

Our varieties need to have a long post-harvest life of at least one month after they’re picked and packed since they’re travelling long distances to destinations like China and the UK. “It’s important to us that if we identify important new varieties from northern producers, that we bring them here, plant them in our test block, and evaluate how they cope. It’s a long process because you need to evaluate at least three years’ worth of fruit. Finding the right varieties requires long waiting periods.”

Closing thoughts In closing, Ms Prado reflected on the company’s challenges and successes in achieving its sustainability goals.

“The difficulties and challenges of the last two or three years, since the start of Covid, have been very hard for the industry.

But it’s also been good for sustainability because we see sustainability and innovation as a path through these difficulties. If everything was easy and business was much better, you wouldn’t feel as much of a need to innovate. However in the current circumstances, you have to change, and fast.”

She concluded: “We’re learning that although we’re a big company with over 65 years behind it, we can change. We’re learning that we can do more. After all, if we don’t do it right now, we might never get another chance to do it.” n Copefrut

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