“The quality of fruit this season is very good because there was no rain during harvest,” said Galilee Export's Eldad Engelberg. “Usually, if you have rain, there can be problems with disease.
” Volume of fruit is also good this year, with a 10 percent increase in quantities of fruit over last season. But with Spanish reserves of Sharoni, which is similar to Israeli Sharon fruit, the added volume will likely lead to stronger competition.
“An expanded Spanish season in Europe is a threat because it gives us less time to market our fruit,” explained Engelberg. “but because we convince in our fruit quality and the ability of arriving to few markets on the same time we could deal with the large quantities.” Israeli fruit, however, is a sweet, seedless variety, has higher sugar content than Spanish fruit, so the product can keep in cold temperatures for a longer period of time and can be stored until the latter parts of the marketing season.
As a young company, this is Galilee's third year of operation, and it's the first year in which they will market the entire production of their growers cooperation Milouot, located in the Western Galilee part, under their own label. Before, about half of the Sharon fruit was sold under other labels, but now everything that comes from their packing houses will go out with the Galilee Export brand, and their expansion into Europe, the U.S., Russia and the Far East has made them one of the three largest Sharon fruit exporter in Israel. “Galilee Export has a ‘growers’ organization meets the global trend of direct commercial connections between growers and the markets, it creates a mutual advantage for both customers and growers.”
Besides the Sharon fruit, Galilee has also other exotic items such as Mango, Litchi and Pomegranates, but also Avocado, Grapefruit and Easy peelers, Lime, Pomelo, Grapes, Pepper, and Medjool Date.
