Berries

“labels or packaging are not the most important thing but fruit itself”

Recovering the value of strawberry against external disguises that do nothing but mask the real essence of this fruit is, according to Juan Báñez, manager to the cooperative Cuna de Platero, the great challenge for Huelva.

There are so many demands within the sector of fruits and vegetables, many of them alien to the product itself, that we are forgetting what in the busi-ness is really worth. Our fruits and vegetables are the best source of health but, who knows that eating 4 strawberries before breaking your fast can help to reduce the levels of uric acid? Sure most consum-ers don’t. And there is where the sector, in this case the sector of strawberry, must strengthen its leading position, not that much against other producer areas –of course against them too-, but to face the pres-sure made by big distribution, which instead of giv-ing value to the product itself, obtains larger profit by imposing certain criteria as for labels, packaging, or even logistics.This is the approach that Juan Báñez, manager to the cooperative Cuna de Platero, who is completely con-vinced that the pressure of big distribution should be changing in the forthcoming years, in fact, the first steps towards that have been taken. In this sense, relationships start to be more fluent, more direct; price hasn’t stopped being important but other parameters such as quality, volume, and continuity of supply are starting to gain significance.

corporate social ResponsibilityBut there is still much to do. Claiming for better fruit qual-ity, further environmental concern, or higher corporate social responsibility, so trendy in recent times, alone is pointless. It is also necessary that distribution and im-porters came to know first-hand what the Huelva sector of strawberry is up to, for it has actually changed a lot in the last years. In this sense, we must highlight the important work that Cuna de Platero is carrying out to improve the integration of immigrant employees hired at their homeland, by offering Spanish language cours-es and online communication systems for them to be in touch with their families in a simple fashion.Another clear example of the important changes hap-pening in Huelva is the diversity of varieties that can be seen nowadays. Thanks to it, as Báñez explains, we showed during the present campaign to European distributors that it is possible to purchase Huelva straw-berries of excellent quality in January and February. “They do not need to turn their sight to other producer areas any longer, which enables us to be the first to reach supermarket shelves; that undoubtedly contrib-utes to improve results at the end of the campaign”, added the manager.

Apart from the productive and commercial development of the present campaign, Cuna de Platero keeps bank-ing on innovative projects that enabled them to diversi-fy their business lines. In this sense, we must highlight their project involving fresh cut and pre-cooked conve-nience strawberry, whose research stage just finished so that they are about to start market tests with a view to turn it into actual product within the next years.