New Sea Route a Major Trade Achievement

This week, Lia Bijnsdorp, Managing Director of United Producers of Mexico, talks about how her organization, in collaboration with a multitude of other parties, was able to successfully organize the first shipment of produce from Veracruz to Rotterdam port, the Netherlands. This direct line reduces shipping time to only 12 days, a real gamechanger for agricultural exporters to Europe.

United Producers of Mexico, also known as UPM, was founded four years ago with the mission to help Mexican growers become exporters. With offices in Rotterdam and Michoacan, the organization arranges trade missions and workshops for growers and has implemented its own quality control program. To read more about the organization, see our interview with Lia from May this year.

Interested in other news? Here are the week’s biggest headlines in agribusiness & food!

• At a virtual session during Cumbre de Negocios 2020 on Nov.8-10, Director General of Nestlé Mexico Fausto Costa stated Nestlé Mexico will comply with the new food label rules. However, he criticized the lack of clarity from the government during the implementation of the reform, as well as the short timetable that companies were given to change the labels.

• During Wednesday's session of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, organized to release the 1,200 reserved articles of the Federal Spending Budget for Fiscal Year 2021, opposition party deputies criticized the government’s lack of spending on agriculture. One member, Cruz Juvenal Roa from the PRI party, pointed out that since 2018, the budget for programs in this sector has reduced by 40 percent. The opposition is warning that this reduction is leading to impoverishment and abandonment of the rural population.

• In a statement, Luis Fernando Haro, General Director of the National Agricultural Council (CNA), agreed that government austerity was affecting the agricultural sector. He stressed the importance of creating a public-private alliance to aid the sector next year.

• About 50 artisanal beermakers have signed up to an initiative proposed by Mexico City authorities to promote artisanal beer. The initiative has been launched in an effort to help reactivate beer sales. The organization Ciudad Cervezera is going to launch a guide containing projects and venues where activities will take place which have to do with beer culture. The organization hopes that the city’s yearly beer expo (Expo Cerveza) will be able to take place at the World Trade Center from Feb. 12 to Feb. 14 next year, despite concerns regarding COVID-19 restrictions.

• According to data released by the Mexican Wine Council (CMV), lower levels of eno-tourism are going to lead to a drop in Mexican wine sales of 60 percent by the end of the year. The drop in sales has also been affected by the closure or limited capacity at hotels and restaurants. The council stated this week that it had successfully cushioned some of the pandemic’s impact by helping winemakers sell more wine through e-commerce channels.

• According to new statistics from Euromonitor, dairy retail sales in Mexico rose by 2.4 percent this year. If this trend continues, it would be the first positive figure since 2017. Euromonitor also indicates that more Mexicans are opting for dairy proteins to replace part of their meat protein intake.

• From March to August 2021, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (SADER) and USDA will carry out a pilot program in the states of Coahuila and Tamaulipas to vaccinate against and apply tick treatments to animals. This was agreed during a binational committee meeting this week. The target is to reduce the impact of the Boophilus spp tick in the eastern border area of the Rio Grande.

• SADER and avocado producer-exporter organizations agreed this week to review work schemes which help prevent avocado being sent to Japan with with unauthorized pest residues. The aim is to strengthen export activities to the Asian country, where 90 percent of all avocado’s consumed come from Mexico.