It is 9:20 pm on May 1st and the pilot announces over the loudspeaker that we are about to take off; he gives the traditional instructions while the aircraft begins to move timidly across the slabs of the Arturo Merino Benítez airport in Santiago de Chile. The Smartcherry team that was going to travel to Europe, made up of our Director of Business and New Projects, Claudia Barriga, and our Editorial Director, Andrea Garrido, was preparing to travel to Rimini, Italy, where the 40th edition of Macfrut, the fruit and vegetable fair that brings together the entire logistics chain, would be held.
After more than 12 hours of travel, they landed in Madrid; there they would make a 6-hour stopover, and then take a flight to Bologna, Italy, an hour and a half from the final destination: Rimini.
Opening day
Wednesday, May 3rd, our team arrived at Rimini Expo Centre, where Macfrut is held every year. At 9:30 in the morning, the fair opened its doors and thousands of people filled its long corridors and large pavilions. On this occasion, the space occupied by the stands and the fair in general was 60 thousand square meters.
For the second consecutive year, Smartcherry was at Macfrut, this time as a media partner of the event, with a stand and, of course, a complete journalistic deployment that kept our platform's audience informed of all the details of the event.
“This year we covered several areas such as Smartcherry. Firstly, we offered full coverage of the event, but we also had a stand where we launched and presented Smartcherry.world, we talked to people from all over the world, we toured the fair visiting the main companies in the agro-industry and we generated important commercial links.”, commented Javiera López, General Manager of Smartcherry.
The highlight of the first day was the opening of Macfrut; the ceremony was chaired by Renzo Piraccinni, President of Macfrut, who highlighted the importance of the fair and its growth compared to last year.
“Today we are inaugurating a turning point for Macfrut and, in general, for the fresh produce industry: we have achieved extraordinary results, the result of great teamwork. We have forgotten how good we are in Italy when we work together. It is a small miracle what we have achieved with Macfrut, a miracle of which we should all be proud; the joint presence of the three organisations of the agricultural world (Confagricultura, CIA, Coldiretti) comforts us in holding an event that lives up to the standards of this sector”, Piraccini said.
Matteo Zoppas, president of the ICE Agency, also spoke about the 40th edition of Macfrut: «As an ICE Agency, we are delighted to be collaborating with this important event. Our role here, in line with the fair, is to give visibility and prominence to the internationalisation of the sector. And we will continue to work together to consolidate Italy's position on the international agri-food scene and generate new opportunities for visibility for our companies.»
Chile at Macfrut
1,100 exhibitors dressed the Rimini Expo Centre with different areas: packaging, nurseries, technology, biosolutions, poultry pavilion and an important area dedicated to various countries that participated in the fair, including Chile, with the presence of Fedefruta, Asoex and ProChile.
“We found the invitation from the Macfrut organization to participate in this year's event very positive, as we were able to explore opportunities for Chilean fresh fruit exports, especially in the European markets, our fourth destination after North America, Asia and Latin America. It is a market that has lost share in our fresh fruit exports, going from second place five seasons ago to fourth position. Therefore, in this type of meeting we can visualize opportunities for growth, as well as new opportunities for growth.”
technologies and innovations that contribute to the development of an increasingly sustainable fruit industry. Likewise, having a stand and participating alongside Fedefruta was also very positive, since it strengthens our work of strengthening relations with other associations, with the aim of addressing opportunities and challenges as a common front," explained Iván Marambio, president of Asoex.
In addition to Chilean entities, several companies from our country were present at the fair; one of them was InGlobo Chile: «We are a company that has been in the market for more than 15 years, we are mainly dedicated to quality control and we are currently looking for the internationalization of the software that allows the collection of data throughout the production cycle, from the orchard to the destination, including reception, process control, quality control, counter-sampling, container consolidation,» said Aníbal Vásquez, Project Coordinator of InGlobo Chile, one of the six companies that ProChile invited to participate in Macfrut.
«We recognize the enormous and great work that suppliers of goods and services have done to generate a powerful agricultural sector, which is the sector that generates a very important export for Chile, so we wanted to bring these companies that provide goods and services; Who are these companies? To give some examples, producers of organic fertilizers, producers of software that are used to control the quality of exports, producers of biostimulants, a topic that is currently being talked about a lot in Europe with a regulation that has just come out in July 2022, therefore the idea is to bring services, bring goods and inputs that today are prepared to be exported and that are the basis of the export of the agricultural sector in Chile, which is world-class., explained Felipe Repetto, Commercial Representative of ProChile in Italy.
Also participating in Macfrut was Chilean Benjamín Urenda from Agrícola San Lucas, located in the Valparaíso region: «I was invited to this event to talk about the current situation and what we are doing to overcome the challenges we currently have in Chilean kiwis. As a producer, I am very up to date and trying out many of the things they do here, different management methods to overcome issues of soil diseases, production problems and fruit quality.»
Urenda also produces cherries, specifically the Santina variety on Maxma 14: «There are many nurseries that have patents for many very interesting varieties, especially varieties with low cold requirements. I am in a very limited area for producing cherries due to the issue of cold hour requirements and there are many varieties that could be used in Chile to be able to go out and differentiate themselves a little from the mass of production in this more northern area and be able to go out a little earlier.», the producer said.
The cherries were taken by Macfrut
Although this 40th edition was dedicated to blueberries, including a symposium specific to this species, there were important opportunities to talk and learn more about cherries. One of them was an interesting workshop that took place during the second day and that addressed, among other topics, “The current state and future perspectives in cherry breeding”, to end with “Varietal innovations in cherries”, with representatives from Chile, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy and the United States.
Alejandro Navarro, director of IVU Chile, and Marlene Ayala, academic and researcher at the Pontifical Catholic University, were part of this interesting forum.
«In addition to attending several meetings with representatives here in Europe, I was invited by Macfrut through our genetic program that we manage IVU varieties in Chile and the rest of the world, we are currently developing in the United States, Chile, Europe, South Africa and probably later in New Zealand and Australia,» explained Alejandro Navarro, director of IVU Chile and speaker at the workshop.
Made in Italy
But when it comes to cherries, there was a lot to see and learn about at Macfrut; the nursery and irrigation pavilion offered a wide range of information on the subject.
«We produce fruit plants in pots and bare roots. The species we produce the most are: apricot, cherry, peach, plum, persimmon, pomegranate, almond, walnut, hazelnut. As for cherries, we produce new, very, very early varieties., and other late varieties, with very late flowering. The important varieties, because they are very early varieties, are, for example, Royal Tioga, Sweet Aryana, Royal Eddie, they are very good varieties because the production is very high, they have very good taste and their flowering is very late," said Vivero Fortunato.
By the way, companies from all sectors participated in Macfrut, including several of our partners.
«The sorting of fruit and vegetables therefore begins in the field with the harvesting cart, which, thanks to the automatic sorting station, provides real-time information on organoleptic characteristics to workers, in order to correctly pick the most suitable fruit and vegetables. Thanks to this UNITEC solution, it is possible to speed up operations in the field, processing more than 20,000 fruits and vegetables per hour, with benefits that are also reflected in the warehouse phase: thanks to the smaller quantity of product to be sorted, savings are achieved in storage and sorting costs, which vary on average around 5-6% of the total.», indicated in a statement from Unitec, a company that sponsored Macfrut once again.
Tomra was also present with a stand at Macfrut; this time with its partner Icoel: «For Tomra Macfrut it is very important, it is key because it is a very important fair for the fresh fruit sector, especially in the Italian market, in central Europe, and this year we share the stand with our integrated representative called Icoel from Italy, it is very important to also strengthen the relationship we have with them in integrated solutions, especially for cherries», said Roberto Ricci, Global Category Director – Tomatoes, and Tomra representative at Macfrut.
Agrofresh also referred to the importance of participating in the fruit and vegetable fair: «Macfrut is important for Italy and for AgroFresh here in Italy, because it is the whole medium we work with. Also, we can bring our new products and all the products from our diversified portfolio. After many years working with Smart Fresh, which is a leading product, many people have seen it here, because all the important fruit companies have a stand here or a representative. So from the south to the north and from the east to the west of Italy they are here. That is the importance of being here. We see our counterparts during the year, but this is a point where we meet again, we have meetings and we talk about business.», said Ivo Secchi, Account Manager Italy Agrofresh.
See you next time!
During the third and final day of Macfrut, our team continued to explore the fair; it seemed almost impossible to get to know every corner of the 60,000 square meters and the 1,100 exhibitors who participated in this year's 40th edition of the event.
Among so many companies, several stand out that are dedicated to packaging, an area of great relevance in the production of cherries; one of them is Graziani Packaging, a company that distributes its products in Chile through Fematri.
«The Graziani Packaging company was born and developed by specializing and focusing on the subject of palletizing. Our particular product is the magic corner, it is the high-quality cardboard corner, we produce it with virgin Scandinavian papers, we mix it with recycled papers of excellent quality, of first selection; together with that comes the plastic strap, which are practically the two tools used to palletize fruit such as cherries for export from Chile to all places in the world», explained Andrea Francesconi, Export Area Manager of Grazziani Packaging.
The Italian industry is connected to Chile in many ways, whether through products and services, or because the eyes of producers and researchers are on our country; Chile is the largest exporter of cherries in the world with more than 415 thousand tons exported during the recent campaign. Added to this is the impeccable quality from the orchard to the export, which has undoubtedly made our country a world reference when it comes to cherry production… and in Italy, they are clear about it.
This concludes Smartcherry's second participation in Macfrut, the fruit and vegetable fair that this year brought together nearly 50,000 visitors from all over the world, a record figure, and which showed an increase in attendees of 29 percent compared to the previous year.
It will be until 2024!
