“The advantage of Costa Rica over Panama are the years of production. Costa Rica started producing pineapples at commercial volumes years before Panama started,” explains Gino Spadafora, president of Tropical Queen extra sweet pineapples from Panama. “We are the pioneer in pineapples from Panama with our first trials in 2000. Nowadays we have 500 hectares of production. Exporting to Europe, Turkey, United States and Asia with Japan and Korea as main countries.”
“Panama has about 3000 hectares of pineapple production in total. Which is really a small amount compared to the production of Costa Rica. However, we do have some advantages such as the climate in Panama. We have stable temperatures throughout the whole year, while Costa Rica has to deal with lower temperatures in November and December. This results in comparable or even better quality of our products,” continues Gino.
He admits that the production has been poor over the last five years. “Last year hasn't been a good year for the production of pineapples. However, we are recovering slowly. The prices will probably be the same this year, about 6 to 7 dollar per box.”
