THE WORLD OF FRUIT SNACKS

[BIZ: Maasbree, May 19]
Chiquita Food Innovation, the fruit processor in Maasbree, processes 25 different sorts of fresh fruit every day with its staff of between 50 and 60. An important part of these fruit products goes to aircraft meals, for example for Lufthansa and KLM. Most clients have the fruit peeled by hand. It’s all entirely natural; there are no chemical additives. Chiquita fruit snacks are fresh for up to six days and look better than the products produced by the competition. But it would be good if they could find machines to take over the work of all these hands.

At Chiquita Food Innovation, a company that is largely in the hands of an American banana company, only the best quality fruit is accepted. Every week they process 50,000 kilos of primarily tropical fruit. In addition to baskets of fruit for aircraft passengers, the fruit is also used in restaurants and as decoration in the bakers.

The growth and turnover is expected to come from additional fruit dishes for supermarkets and filling stations. Now, these sorts of products are just about 10% of the EUR 5m revenues, but perhaps in a few years it will be 50%.
(Source: Dagblad de Limburger)

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