—by Ross Courtney
With an enhancing financial system, frictionless entry and a curious shopper base, Mexico has turn into one of many American tree fruit business’s export markets of selection.
Over the previous 10 years, U.S. shippers of apples, cherries and pears have more and more relied on their southern neighbor to prop up their export portfolios, whereas advertising teams plaster pictures of fruit on freeway billboards, grocery store aisles and avenue stalls together with Mexican colloquialisms and widespread film characters.
“The Mexican market is sort of resilient,” mentioned Juan Carlos Moreira, employed by the Washington Apple Fee to advertise apples in Mexico. Nearly all U.S. apple exports to Mexico are from Washington.
Mexico is the highest export marketplace for apples and pears — and has been for a while. It’s No. 5 for cherries, however the share of exports heading to Mexico has steadily elevated for all three crops over the previous 10 years.
After all, there’s uncertainty, too. Each international locations lately elected new presidents, and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has mentioned he intends to impose new tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico. Additionally, the peso has taken successful in latest months.
A part of the explanation for Mexico’s rising significance as an export market is the tit-for-tat tariffs levied in additional far-flung markets, which started beneath the primary Trump administration and continued beneath President Biden. Mexico did the identical however has since eliminated tariffs on American fruit. In the meantime, delivery prices and port congestion spiked through the pandemic. Trucking fruit to Mexico, similar to Canada, isn’t essentially low-cost, however not less than it doesn’t require ocean journey.
Mexico’s personal financial system has fostered a curiosity about contemporary produce amongst customers of all revenue ranges.
Mexican households have, on common, extra disposable revenue than they used to. The nation’s gross home product in 2020 was 3 times its degree in 1990, based on David Magaña, a market analyst for Rabobank. In the identical time-frame, birthrates fell from about 3.5 youngsters per girl to just a little over 2, about par with the US. Farm wages in Mexico are additionally going up, even quicker than within the U.S.
“Extra Mexican buyers are going to supermarkets for contemporary produce,” he mentioned.
The nation’s largest retailer is none apart from Walmart, however different chains have constructed out, too, partially changing the street-level stalls and nook shops of the previous. That development provides extra fruit entry to chilly storage and means packers can work instantly with retailers as a substitute of wholesale import corporations.
What’s extra, Mexican buyers present a flexibility in tastes and are keen to strive extra varieties than they’ve up to now. Even membership apples make it to the Mexican market as of late, whereas buyers buy a mix of sizes and grades, too, mentioned Lindsey Huber, worldwide advertising supervisor for the Washington Apple Fee.
Teams selling fruit are attempting to benefit from this upturn.
Apples, pears and cherries can all be discovered on billboards and different indicators that springboard off Mexican sayings and traditions. For instance, Grupo PM decks out pink and inexperienced pears as skeletons for Day of the Lifeless murals. Apple entrepreneurs are 5 years right into a marketing campaign with the phrase “Life is less complicated with apples,” a derivative of a Mexican custom of explaining complicated or summary concepts with one thing relatable, resembling an apple.
“It takes you again to high school,” Moreira mentioned. “In your first math ebook, one apple plus one apple is 2.”
One of many largest alternatives for pears is within the type of a virtually 15-year partnership that enables Grupo PM to combine pear commercials with main film characters with out paying costly license charges. It began when representatives of twentieth Century Fox reached out to Grupo PM and instructed the cross-
promotions for the 2010 movie “Gulliver’s Travels,” starring Jack Black. “Marmaduke” adopted. At the moment, pears subsequent to “Kung Fu Panda” and “Paw Patrol” adorn buses, grocery store aisles and freeway billboards.
“We at all times speak about how fortunate we’re,” mentioned Mónica Moreno Arellano, chief advertising officer for Grupo PM, which has the contract to advertise USA Pears.
At a latest assembly of the Pear Bureau Northwest, which collectively promotes Washington and Oregon pears beneath the USA Pears model, director of worldwide advertising Jeff Correa praised how the business’s efforts had reshaped the Mexican marketplace for pears.
“We’ve remodeled that market from a spot to push off the issues of the business to a significant market we depend on,” he mentioned. “It’s our greatest market as a result of it’ll take all value factors.”
Tree fruit teams additionally market to import wholesalers, which they collectively name the “commerce,” supplying them with technical details about the fruit and methods to deal with it.
These wholesalers, supermarkets and avenue stalls all purchase and promote from one another, forming a posh weave of contemporary fruit commerce within the nation, attracting patrons from most revenue ranges.
“We’ve customers who know what they need,” Moreno Arellano mentioned. •
