Jorge Ovalle produces and has exported Chilean almonds since 1989. In 1994 he incorporated this agroindustrial area to process and export almonds in its different forms: roasted, salted, shelled, and not shelled.
"We rank fourth nationally, with 2,000 hectares. Chile doesn't have a very big area dedicated to almonds, as it only has 10,000 hectares devoted to this product. Globally, it is an absolutely marginal market regarding its area, but it has the strongest presence on the globe because we export 90% of what we produce, unlike California, which sell 80% of its production within the United States and barely exports," said the producer.
"We export mainly to South America, the Netherlands, and Germany. In recent years we've obtained food safety and ecological product certifications," Ovalle said. He also added that they were not shipping to the Asian market, as it was currently unavailable, but that they hoped tariff barriers would be eliminated in 2017.
"Chile is able to export almonds to different markets because, thanks to their quality, the country's varietal differentiation is more refined than in California." The other main reason that they are successful is that Chile's harvest ends a few months before the end of the year, when there is a spike in world consumption, while California starts selling their product after said spike. "We harvest between March and late April in Chile, when the manufacturing process also starts, so we have a very fresh product ready for the world's greatest celebrations, the Ramadan in the Arab world, and Christmas and Easter in the northern hemisphere," he said.
There were very high prices for the harvest of March 2015. "Chilean producers got $8 dollars per kilo," he added. However, this year producers expect that price will decrease between 10% and 13% because of the global economic downturn. "It's good news for producers; prices might be lower but it is very good for the manufacturing industry," said Ovalle.
El Niño has not caused too many problems because, unlike most fruits, almonds are not too affected by off-season rains.
Regarding the future of the industry, Ovalle is optimistic about the new varieties and the machinery that allows harvesting almonds automatically, just as it done with olives. "The harvest is the great issue in almonds, since all the almonds have to be placed in a machine that separates the nut from the shell. So, if we can have machines to handle 90% of a hectare, we can obtain a dry food that does not require much energy expenditure after it is harvested and feed millions of people around the world; something that can't be done with apples, as they need to be refrigerated," he said.
