Alejandra Guerrero, Baika’s Export Manager tells us about our new Chileprunes associate projects.
Chileprunes has a new associate: Baika, the exporting arm of a group of companies with the same name that administers more than 4,000 hectares of fresh fruit plantations (avocados, oranges, tangerines, lemons, blueberries among others) and dry fruits (nuts and almonds).
In relation to plums, they work with associated producers in consignment models capturing the equivalent to 200 hectares of European plums approximately.
Baika seeks to export from the origin, with technologies and certifications that allows them to take to the world a direct trade experience, without intermediaries “working Chile and America’s best fruit with a guarantee or traceability, homogeneity and trust”, they say at Baika.
With respect to its arrival to Chileprunes, they state they are happy to join the guild and to be able to participate, contribute in the labor of making the prune known to the world.
“In the stage that we are at Baika it made sense to associate. Obviously to any exporter, to promote a product by its own in a new market because of the resources needed is very difficult; on the other hand Chileprunes has the expertise, it has walked along the road in the marketing and has reached the international consumers as well as in the political and protocol management that needs to be done, for example, to talk to ambassadors, the regulatory and sanitary counterparts in faraway destinations as India”, says Alejandra Guerrero, Baika’s Export Manager and the person in charge of prunes in the company.
She adds that in Baika they believe in the work of guilds and that is the reason they joined Chilenut, the Chilean Avocado Committee, the Citric Committee and The International Nut & Dried Fruit Council (INC) as well. They also are very active in participating in congresses and expositions. “So, it was just a matter of time to join Chileprunes. It took us some time because we are not producers, but in recent years we have been focused in prunes”, she adds.
This focus is reflected through the 1,479 metric tons of prunes exported in 2024 and the goal for this year of 2,000 tons which would imply a growth higher than 35%. The product is sold in bulk (25 kilo sacks and 10 kilo boxes) but also packed for retail; they want to develop this line more in the future.
Its main destinations are China and Europe and there mainly Poland. Alejandra Guerrero says that Chileprunes and Baika objectives intersect specially in the importance both give to market diversification; they concur that India is a very interesting market the same as other emerging markets such as Indonesia.
A story of entrepreneurship and diversification
Thirty-one years ago, the agricultural entrepreneur Ignacio Del Río had a vision: to go off the beaten path and start an innovation path that would shake up local and global agroindustry. In La Araucanía region he was pioneer cultivating blueberries making this noble berry known to millions of people who made it a tendency that is far from coming to an end.
His success led him to explore and succeed in different activities, he bought other farms, made alliances and merged with relevant actors of the local industry adding new products as avocados, citric fruits, nuts and prunes among other dried fruits which would diversify positively his offer.
In the path of innovation, he advanced importantly creating Baika, an exporter company that got rid of intermediaries and allowed the creation of an integrated virtuous chain to produce and export directly to several markets in the world in a clean, fast and efficient way. Sustainability acquired relevance and he built high technology productive plants in San Felipe and Hijuelas where fruits from all over the country converge to go to the world from a mid-point to the main ports in Chile.
He also diversified broadening the product grid according to market nutritional tendencies, (citric and dried fruits) as well as creating new international alliances to become multi-origin suppliers and have fruit the whole year.
That is how nowadays it exists Andes Secret, Valles del Norte, Valles del Sur, Tropical Millenium and Biopollen Solutions.
Today, this vision is still growing thanks to years of experience and the push of new generations. The team is made up by 1,300 collaborators who work from the fields and offices in Chile, Perú, Colombia, México, United States and Spain to fulfill the standards of a global company that works every year to achieve milestones in a story that has just began.
In the picture, Alejandra Guerrero during the last Expo Prunes together with Cristobal Petersen, Baika’s dried fruit Commercial Manager.
