President Mauricio Macri took the lead in negotiations to unlock the opening of the Chinese market to Argentine cherries.

In an extensive meeting with producers, he promised to send a letter to the president of the Chinese government, Xi Jingping, to accelerate the negotiations and unlock the barriers for this product in that market.

“If we manage to open China for Argentine cherries, we will go from 2,000 hectares, which is what we currently have in production, to more than 35,000 hectares. This means 110,000 new jobs for Rio Negro, Neuquen, Chubut, and Santa Cruz. Legal quality work,” said Macri in a television program. “We can enter this market before Chile, due to geographical issues, and thus obtain better prices than them,” he added.

But the differences with the neighboring Andean country are still enormous. The first thing that must be highlighted is that Chile has a stable economic model and that their costs to produce fruit are lower than those of southern Argentina.

In addition, Chile has a very competitive cherry production and commercial structure, and achieves high volumes of this fruit.

In a recent congress held in Santiago de Chile, the head of the Decofrut company, Manuel Alcaino, said that Chile planted an average of 6,000 hectares of cherries per year. Based on average yields and the time it takes the crop to enter production, the specialist said that Chile would double its cherry supply in the next five seasons. That is to say, they will produce more than 250,000 tons per year.

Last year, Chile exported more than 150,000 tons of cherries, i.e. more than 30 million boxes, breaking the record 103,081 tons  (almost 22 million containers) it exported in the 2014-2015 season.

Chile has more than 20,000 hectares planted, and its planted area has been growing at a rate of 3,000 hectares per year in the last five years and at a rate of 6,000 hectares in the last three seasons.