Cañamás Hnos.: First quarter analysis 2020-2021

Now that we are fully immersed in 2021, the international year of fruits and vegetables, and that in Cañamás Hermanos, particularly, they are in full change of varieties of both oranges and clementines, we have spoken with their Operations Director, Quico Peiró, to take stock of the first quarter of this citrus campaign.

The first quarter in three key points:

Production

As Quico Peiró announced at the beginning of the campaign, this first quarter Cañamás Hermanos have had a good volume of citrus fruits, with a good demand from the markets, but which has been characterized by a short size in the case of navelina and the clemenules.

One of the factors that has had them most in suspense throughout the campaign has been, as usual, the weather. “We came out of a very dry summer that, as we mentioned, has accentuated the lack of caliber of autumn citrus fruits, and we have suffered a humid autumn due to rains and dew, which has sometimes altered the quality of the fruit,” says the Director of Operations.

At this time, we are coming out of a very cold storm, with temperatures that have reached below 0 in some areas, and it will be necessary to analyze whether it has affected Cañamás Hermanos to a greater or lesser extent in the different production areas. In any case, as Quico Peiró comments: “we are technologically prepared to face any problem and not let it reach the final consumer.”

Consumption

Customer and consumer demand during the months of September and October was good, and this trend continued until the first fortnight of November, when there was “a stop in consumption due, on the one hand, to the high temperatures that we had on the European continent at that time and, on the other, an accumulation of supply concentrated in varieties such as oronules, clemenules, clemenvilla, salustiana, navelina and grapefruits in the markets”, recalls Quico Peiró.

The effects of the second wave of the coronavirus in Europe have also caused fluctuations in consumption due to the constant change in the restrictions of each country. In general, the consumption of fruits and vegetables grew in Spain by 10% in November in relation to the same month of 2019 (according to the latest official data from the Food Consumption Panel of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fishing and Food) as we spent more time at home and we are more aware of having a healthy diet.

Workplace safety

Thanks to individual responsibility in complying with the occupational safety and health measures set by Cañamás Hermanos and the health authorities, the company has kept the incidence of the virus in the organization under control. Positive cases have been isolated and have not significantly affected the development of the work activity.

In addition, the implementation of the new organizational model, more resilient and which allows Cañamás Hermanos to guarantee an efficient and effective production system from the field, has also provided them with a service to their customers without interruptions. As the Director of Operations clarifies: “in our centers, despite being in environments where socially contagions are uncontrolled, we are not having any source of contagion in the workplace”.

This is how they started the second part of the campaign, which is still marked by a high incidence of coronavirus cases, which causes a certain imbalance in sales. In the production part, there is a rise in the prices of raw materials at origin, which will undoubtedly have to be transferred to the prices of the product. In spite of everything, it should be noted that the most important part of this campaign is, in the words of the Director of Operations “the resilience of the employees that are part of the Cañamás group, who are facing a very difficult situation where uncertainty is the only certainty, working side by side to continue offering high quality citrus to society.