After making its name in dragonfruit, Colombia's Asoppitaya plans to move into organic crops and other tropical fruit like granadillas, passion fruit and baby bananas.

Asoppitaya general manager Sandra Garcia

The organization, comprising 50 small to medium-sized growers of yellow dragon fruit in the Cauca Valley, was formed 14 years ago with support from an array of government entities.

"We started the task step by step, first attending to the local market, learning about all the commercialization process, and later we took steps into the international market," general manager Sandra Garcia told www.freshfruitportal.com during Fruit Logistica in Berlin.

"Fortunately we had the help of the Colombian government, including ProColombia, the Colombian Agricultural Institute (ICA), the National Learning Institute (SENA), the Colombian Horticultural Institute (Asohofrucol) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) - we have had formidable support, and we have had convincing results."

She said her goal was to make the group self-sustainable while providing customers in Colombia and around the world with quality and quantity guarantees.

Out of around 15 metric tons (MT) produced per week during the season, Asoppitaya exports 2-3MT, with the main campaign running from July to December, followed by a smalller harvest from February to April.

"We started to export in 2010, beginning with Japan as the destination market – it's really been a good business card for us because Japan is identified as a very demanding market, and it was a good school for us in taking steps to export to other markets like Spain and Hong Kong.

"We do traceability control and we are guaranteeing good agricultural practices through certifications with ICA and also through GlobalG.A.P."

She highlighted the group had plans to increase surface area dedicated to dragon fruit, promoting plantings and crop renewal.

"We also want to broaden our portfolio as we want to include new products to be able to better service our clients.

"For example, when they want dragon fruit they often want granadillas, passion fruit and baby bananas, among others.

"We would like to make the the most of the organic trend, so we are having new crops certified as organic on several farms," she said, adding that many properties produced in an organic way but simply had not yet been certified as officially organic.

In terms of other markets, the group is also shipping to countries like Singapore, Indonesia, Canada and Germany, while it is looking for a greater presence in the Swiss market as well with help from the Swiss Import Promotion Programme’s (SIPPO).

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