Export of agro-foods grows

More foods are being exported from Guanajuato to the world

In the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic the agro-foods sector in Guanajuato shows positive numbers

Silao/Gto News

Mauricio Preciado of the International Promotion Unit for the food sector of COFOCE, noted that since tha start of the crisis caused by the Covid 19 pandemic, entrepreneurs from Guanajuato increased their effort so that they wouldn´t stop but maintain their production.

The leaders

“We are still the national leaders, we are in the fourth place in agro-industrial activity and fifth in frozen vegetables, we are very important, that didn’t change. As a matter of fact we keep growing at a very importan rate, remember we are the only sector in all the industry in Mexico that keeps growing, then until now we already have 138 companies that go on exporting and until the first week of September we had already sent 360,000 containers”, said Preciado.

The Official noted that this months have been of great learning for producers, an experience that helped them improve their productivity, and it is shown in the exponential growth of the sector.

Constant growth

We have a really important growth in frozen produce, it grew 22%, which is a lot, this was caused by the pandemic of course, the part of fresh produce maintained practically normal, it grew 12% but what makes it really interesting is that for example the animal products grew 109%, the truth is that we are advancing a lot in this sector and in products with alcohol contents we grew almost 30%, we are in a very positive moment”, said Preciado.

All subsectors grew

The Coordination of Business Intelligence of COFOCE, published a report made on data from the General Customs Administration SAT, that shows in detail, by sub-sector, relevant data on this growth.

According to Preciado, the increase in exports of alcoholic beverages, occured because of the purchase of ingredients and beverages to prepare drinks at home.

Preciado also said that in the case of Vegetables, it is very important to consider that even though the numbers are positive for the sector, difficult months are coming, but this is a common situation.

Peaks and valleys

“It is normal that we have this peak in January-June because it is the closing of our season and then we surge again with fresh produce starting in October, then the numbers are positive now, we will have some lower numbers for the season, it is normal. Because right now we are not producing, we are in the process of reconstructing the fields and we go back with products in October”, said Preciado.

The Coordination of Business Intelligence of COFOCE presented the data from the ITC Export Potential Map where some opportunity areas of exportation for producers from Guanajuato are detailed.

In search of new markets

The best country to sell Guanajuatense products is the United States of America, but other important markets are Canada, Germany, Rusia and France as alternatives to diversify the destination of products. “What are we looking for now?, Those contacts. The orderly way to arrive, we don’t want to simply make phone calls. In the part of foods we pre-sell, then now we are working in coming close to important connections in Europe, we are coming close and we are also planning to go to Central and South America, because those are markets that Guanajuato is not serving, we want to explore and keep doing our homework on much more exotic markets like the muslim world, but we still need to be trained on that, we need training, we need to understand even the requirements, because the -Hal Al- certification is much more on the cultural side than the quality; we, on the part of quality are very competitive”, noted Mauricio Preciado of COFOCE.