With 212 million inhabitants and a very small domestic production, Brazil is a very interesting market for Belgian pears, Belgian cooperative BelOrta thinks. At the moment, Brazil mainly imports pears from Argentina, Portugal and Italy. BelOrta and Belgian marketing organisation for agricultural products VLAM want to change this. They want to export (more) Belgian Conference pears to Brazil.
During the past couple of years, very small volumes of Belgian Conference pears (about 150 to 225 tonnes per year) have already been exported to Brazil. Both BelOrta and VLAM see possibilities to further scale up the export.
During the past 10 years, the pear hectarage in Belgium has increased from 9,080 ha in 2014/2015 to 10,630 ha in 2023/2024. Until 2014, a great part of the Belgian pears went to Russia. After the Russian boycott of fruits and vegetables from the EU, Belgium had to go in search of other markets.
During an economic mission in November 2024, VLAM had Brazilian consumers taste Belgian Conference pears. During the trade mission, fruit and vegetable auction BelOrta signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with a Brazilian retailer to further optimise logistic processes through Brazil and share knowledge on storage technology. Belgium has a lot of experience in the logistics and storage of pears and wants to make use of this to get pears to Brazilian supermarkets in optimum condition.
(Source: Vilt.be)
