Currently, a team of 50 people work at Masseria Fruttirossi's packing station. In addition, the Italian company has about 100 workers employed for the harvesting. The pomegranate season has been in full swing for a month now. We took a closer look and asked how the season is going in the current context of socioeconomic crisis.
The pomegranates are being washed
"The international crisis has not seemed to hit us hard. Orders have remained fairly constant since the start of the season. We even recorded a slight increase compared to the same period in 2021. We are currently working off around 25 tons per shift. The pomegranates are destined for various Italian supermarket chains and wholesale markets. Despite the greater savings tendency of households, pomegranate is gaining ground in the market. However, we obviously cannot yet consider it a mass-consumed fruit, although more and more people are aware that the consumption of pomegranates brings various health benefits," said Dario De Lisi, sales manager of the Apulia-based company.
Dario De Lisi
"We started the pomegranate season a good week earlier than elsewhere in Italy. Modern cold stores with controlled atmosphere allow us to guarantee customers continuity and quantity of supply. Our goal is to extend the pomegranate season to about 8 months in two ways, namely by pushing the start of the season forward with early varieties and extending sales into March/April with innovative storage techniques for the Wonderful pomegranate, our main variety. We expect to start harvesting this variety in mid-October," he added.
We asked De Lisi what makes Masseria Fruttirossi competitive in this historically challenging period. " We have been a strong believer in environmental sustainability from the very beginning, an issue that is only now coming into the spotlight. Both we and our customers are now benefiting from this. By producing our own energy, we suffer little from the additional cost of energy. With a solar panel farm of 750 kw/h, we can reduce the electricity bill and thus keep the selling prices of our products unchanged."
"The harvest of the three early varieties - Shany, Emek and Ako - ends this week. We have more quantities than last season, thanks to new plots coming into production. With the harvest of the Wonderful variety in mid-October, our export activity will commence. We plan to increase export volumes not only within but also outside Europe," concluded De Lisi.
For more information:
Masseria Fruttirossi
C.da Terzo Dieci snc
74011 Castellaneta (Taranto) – Italy
+39 099 9647688
[email protected]
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