Dan Siekman

The future looks bright for China-US joint venture Mr. Avocado as it rides surging demand for avocados in China. After only about a year and a half in business, the marketer of ripened avocados is seeing big sales growth. It is also considering adding a third avocado ripening facility in China, and is making progress in construction of an enormous new domestic China avocado growing base.

Already, a big name in cold-chain infrastructure, Emerson has in the past few years acquired three companies and launched a new business unit called Cargo Solutions, which provides logging and tracking solutions for the products themselves that are moving through the cold chain.

The trend of slumping prices is a sign of major trouble for the kiwifruit industry in China, which produced 2.4 million tons of kiwifruit in 2016, more than half the global total. Produce Report analyzes some of the key challenges facing the kiwifruit industry and reasons behind the weak prices so far this season.

“Five to seven years ago, Europe was 90% of Israel’s citrus exports,” said Tal Amit, Director of the Citrus Division of Israel’s Plant Production and Marketing Board, during a presentation earlier this month at the Asiafruit Congress in Hong Kong. “Nowadays, Europe is only about 72 to 73%. We are focusing more and more on the Asian market and also the North American market.”