Ignacio Caballero, the executive director of the Table Grape Committee of Fruits from Chile, has said that due to the impact of recent rains in Chile's Valparaíso, Metropolitan, and O’Higgins in March, the organization will be updating its export projections.
The Chilean organization estimates a slight drop of 1% in export volumes from the former projection of 66,940,146 standardized boxes (each weighing 8.2 kilos).
“As a Committee, we have made an estimate of the impact of the rains on the export volumes for the current season, concluding that the rainfall will affect 1% of the total grapes to be exported this season," he explained. "The new estimate is 65,821,986 boxes (8.2 kilos each) to be exported during the 2024–25 season."
The information provided by the Committee includes data from 30 fresh grape exporting companies from the affected regions.
He clarified that the weather event only affected a small portion of grapes that were yet to be harvested, with the impacted volume totaling 796,156 boxes (8.2 kilos each), which corresponds to 11% of the grapes still to be harvested in the three affected regions. “The bulk of the volume had already been harvested, stored, or was ready for export,” he noted.
Caballero added, “If we break down the impact by affected region, in Valparaíso and O’Higgins it was 2% each, and in the Metropolitan region it was 1%, while in the other grape-producing regions, the impact was 0%.”
The United States is Chile's primary grape trading partner. In 2024, Chile exported $1.09B of Grapes, being the 16th most exported product in Chile. Last year, the main destinations of Chile's Grapes exports were the United States ($538M), China, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
The first edition of GrapeTech will be held on June 18 at the Casino Monticello Event Center. The event, organized by UvaNova and Yentzen Group, will be the most important technical event on table grapes in Chile and will bring together world experts to provide technical aspects that allow the growth of the industry, such as post-harvest issues, crop management, analysis of new varieties and nutrition, among others—more information at events@yentzengroup.com or visit www.grapetechconvention.com.
