Colombian avocado exports continue to rise

Avocados continue to be one of Colombia’s flagship export products outside of the mining industry.

El Dinero reports, through information from Dane and ProColombia, that during the first half of 2019 exports for avocados have increased by 37.6%.

European countries like The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Spain, and Belgium are the main destinations and in some of these countries, avocado imports have increased more than 100%.

Dinero reports that Flavia Santoro Trujillo, President of ProColombia, celebrated these accomplishments and highlighted the work that has been done from departments such as Antioquia ($27M in exports, 20.7% growth), Risaralda ($17.5M in exports, 88.6% growth), Valla del Cauca ($3.8M in exports, .2% growth), and Caldas ($470,505 in exports, 605% growth), which have been responsible for these good results while taking advantage of the trade agreements that Colombia has.

While Trujillo celebrated these accomplishments, he also stressed that work must continue in order to increase the presence in markets such as the European Union, United States, Bahrain, and Singapore. Colombia is also currently waiting on sanitary admissibility to be able to export avocados to countries in Asia, such as China and South Korea.

Given that the U.S. market is the recipient of 41% of the world’s avocado exports and also being the destination with the greatest increase in demand for Colombian avocados (registering an increase close to 700%), this market is of great importance to Colombia.

Due to these great increases, foreign investment firms from the United States to Korea and Japan have increased their investment in the 200,000 hectares that Colombia uses to grow avocados.

The Institute of Research and Development of Foreign Trade (Idexcam) of the Lima Chamber of Commerce (CCL) has stated that while Peru is the main exporter of South America, Colombia is emerging as a great seller, in the last five years growing 125% as a producer.

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