Sweet Sapphire & Sweet Mayabelle
Grupo JD is a Brazilian group focused on agribusiness and holds three companies: São Marcelo a cattle farm, trading company Bravis and the biggest grape producer in Brazil, which is Labrunier. “Our trading company Bravis supplies our clients with fruits other than grapes, for example melons, nadorcott, murcots, oranges and lemon. Labrunier is our grape company supplying only its own production domestically and internationally.”
Arnaldo explains that 2015 has been a good year for Labrunier. “We finished harvesting at the end of December with a total volume close to 22,000 tons. Compared to the 19,000 tons of 2014 we have a 10% growth in yield. Our planted area is 900 hectares of grapes, from which we have harvested 750 hectares. The rest of the fields are younger plants that will be harvested in the coming season. In 2016, the harvest starts in the beginning of April and ends in the second half of November, with two crops per plant. Due to the very stable climate conditions in this area of Brazil we are able to harvest twice a year.”
Sweet Celebration
“Besides the standard seeded and seedless varieties offered by Labrunier, such as Thompson, Crimson and Red Globe, we are also recognized due to our strong development of our new varieties. This has been our focus for the last 6 years. During this period we converted approximately 600 hectares from our total area to new varieties already. We started investing in a 4 hectare test block with varieties brought from the most important breeders in the world. 136 varieties were already tested, but only after approval of our clients and technical team do varieties get to be produced on a commercial scale.”
According to Arnaldo, this process takes a long time and requires many tests. "Yet it already resulted in the new varieties that Labrunier has brought to the market strongly in 2014 and 2015. Such as Sweet Globe, Sugar Crisp, Sweet Mayabelle, Sweet Sunshine, Sweet Celebration, Jack's Salute, Timco, Sweet Surprise, Timpson, Arra 15, Vitoria, Sweet Jubilee, Sweet Sapphire and Cotton Candy.
Sweet Globe
“Each new variety brings a combination of advantages when compared to the regular varieties. Firstly, they must deliver eating quality and then the balance between shape, resistance, crunchiness, colour, and yield. For example, the Cotton Candy is getting a lot of attention because it actually tastes like cotton candy, another case is the Sweet Sapphire, which is black seedless, has an exotic taste and elongated shape. Varieties natural conditions result in less work on the fields and their resistance for several diseases and weather conditions allows us to use considerably less chemicals.”
Currently 60% of Labrunier's production is kept in the local market and 40% is exported. The exported volume reaches mostly retailers in Europe, North-America, Middle East and Asia. “We supply retailers all over the world. More than looking for new markets, we believe that there is a lot of potential for those new varieties to gain importance in the markets we already export to. With the result to increase our market share, concludes Arnaldo.”
Agropecuaria Labrunier will be present during the Fruit Logistica: hall 23, B-01.
For more information:
Agropecuaria Labrunier
T: (11) 3095-9950
F: (11) 3095-9951
E: [email protected]
E: [email protected]
www.grupojd.com.br/labrunier