The inaugural Mango Marketing Promotion and Information (MMPI) meeting kicked off at Fruit Logistica last week with the goal of improving market information transparency in the industry.

South African Subtropical Growers' Association (Subtrop) industry affairs manager Rudolf Badenhorst headed up the meeting, which included representatives from the U.S., Brazil, Israel, Ecuador, South Africa, Spain, Australia, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the U.K.

Industry representatives from Oman, Egypt, Morocco, Kenya and Pakistan sent their apologies for being unable to attend.

In a summary sent out to the industry after the event, Badenhorst said a consensus was reached that the goal of the organization would be:

"To create a benefit for the global Mango industry through the sharing of certain marketing information between countries, thereby hopefully strengthening the relationship of these international role players."

It was also noted that MMPI would be voluntary, involve no fees and would be totally opposed to the practice of collusion, which meant production volumes but not prices would be included in the information shared.

Badenhorst said the industry information shared would include production seasons, total expected volumes, market information (Europe, U.S., Middle East, Asia and Other), total surface planted, percentage bearing, percentage non-bearing and projected growth.

"It was further agreed that in addition to the abovementioned information it would be of great value to the industry if participants could share crop and weekly shipment forecasts, this will then we corroborated by actual week by week shipping reports that will be sent out to all participants," said Badenhorst.

The U.S. National Mango Board's Leonardo Ortego informed the meeting he would assist by sharing the information collected by the board, which concerns several other producing countries which were not present at the meeting, including Peru, Guatemala and Haiti.

Mexican industry representatives Alan Paulin, Tomas Paulin Quezada and Tomas Paulin Nava - who represent the companies Conembo Mexicana, Coemango AC and Conaspromango - said they hoped the MMPI would not only assist in gathering information but also create a platform to share technical and scientific information.

The next MMPI meeting will be at the PMA Fresh Summit in Anaheim in October.

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