The Brazilian year-round mango supplier to Europe, the Sebastião Da Manga Group, notes via their CEO Ronaldo Araújo: “Its been very difficult and shocking for us to add or increase the prices on the fruit due to the extremely high increases on sea and ground freight during the past six months - we have an increase of approximately 55% on the cost on this period of time, so we understand that the final client will be taking a big part of the prejudice, but there’s also not a big chance to survive on the market if we don’t add it to our final costs.”
Sebastião Da Manga is a producer group from Brazil that has been in existence for 30 years, with 10 farms located across the São Francisco Valley in the cities of Petrolina, Juazeiro and Casa Nova. They export from Brazil to their own companies in Europe, who are based in the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal. They have a qualified team who receive, check the fruit quality, and ship from "one pallet to a whole full truck" to any of their clients in any part of Europe. The group grows and exports Palmer, Mango Espada (Brazilian variety), and Kent mangoes mainly to Europe with up to five containers sent to Canada. Their total volume per year is 30 000 tons, with the percentage for each variety split into 93% of Palmer and 7% of Espada and Kent.
“Prices depend on the season of the year, what set prices always depends on what the market is demanding and the offer from other countries with mango. The ideal price would be between €6 and €7 per box with 4Kg with CIF - Europe. In the last couple of years, apart from our mango production, we had invested on lime and ginger production, since Brazilian weather allows us to produce the same way as mangoes during the entire 12 months of the year. For ginger production we can produce from May until December. Today we own limes with 50 000 trees planted, however our goal is to keep planting for the next five years in order to reach 300 000 trees, that is about 440 hectares, due to the big demand for limes in the market,” explains Araújo.
The group has over 630 hectares of mainly mango production, which is offered all year round with the limes and 30 hectares of ginger. “In Petrolina, summer is hot, humid and the sky almost covered. Winter is short, warm with an almost cloudless sky. Throughout the year, the weather is dry with strong winds, with a temperature that generally ranges from 20°C to 34°C and is rarely less than 19°C or above 37°C,” states Araújo.
The group also grows dragon fruit that is ready from January to May each year. “We would like to grow in the UK market, where we still don’t have the wished demand,” notes Araújo.
For more information:
Ronaldo Araújo
Sebastião Da Manga Group
Tel: +55 21 98458-1439
Email: ronaldo@sebastiaodamanga.com
www.sebastiaodamanga.com