Vanguard Peru is feeling "optimism and excitement" as an overarching theme for the upcoming Peruvian grape season.

“Our Ivory variety is the first fruit off the line, and they feature great size, great color, and great taste,” Fanny Robles, Vanguard Manager - Peru Procurement and Sales said.

“We’ve never seen Ivory grapes that look like this before and we are seeing this consistently for all our varieties and our packinghouse teams have a renewed excitement.” 

 Compared to last season, the company is "very prepared right now", she said. "The entire global team is more  connected than ever from those in the fields to the packing house, shipping lines, and customers.” 

Quality parameters have been further developed to meet packing needs for each different market.

“Our more experienced team combined with our strong crop means we can be more  competitive in the market this year.” 

The Vanguard Peru team was recently visited by two global customers for a pre-season visit,  departing with a very positive review and eager fulfillment plans – “We had one customer who  wanted the entire Ivory crop!”

By the end of November, our red varieties will commence packing along with the remainder of the green varieties, including Sweet Globe, shortly thereafter, around mid-December we will begin with our black varieties. 

The Peruvian crop will yield approximately 55 percent green grapes, 40 percent red grapes and five percent black this season.  

“Our cultural practices at the field level and significantly improved quality are two very positive developments leading to more volume than we forecasted,” Dirk Winkelmann, President of Vanguard Direct said.

“In particular with our green grapes, the average berry weight is a bit more than forecasted and that alone could push the crop up by 10%. Equally important our pack-outs are quite a few points higher this season.”  

On the topic of category breakdown, Winkelmann said: “This year we are seeing an almost  negligible volume of category 2 product.” 

Preseason strategic negotiations and alignment has Vanguard well prepared and positioned to transport the increased grape volumes. Currently, there are no concerns around space availability and equipment in the Ica region. 

“The expansion of our facilities, to include both container plugs and increased pre-cool and cold storage, will help to mitigate any logistical delays."

"We are well-positioned as we head into our peak grape volumes,” Winkelmann said.