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Rabat – For Israel’s largest fruit grower and exporter Mehadrin, Morocco is “part of a larger plan” to supply avocados to Europe, to meet the surge in global demand.
Mehadrin and Morocco signed an agreement that authorizes the Israeli company to grow avocados in the North African country back in April. The deal came as part of the growing economic and diplomatic ties between the two countries following their renewal of ties in December, 2020.
The Israeli company entered into a joint venture agreement with a Moroccan firm, each investing $8.9 million (MAD 80 million) within the first three years of the project. Mehadrin will hold a 51% stake in the venture. The avocados will be grown on agricultural land stretching across 500 hectares, with the Israeli company expecting to reach a maximum output of 10,000 tons of avocados per year.
Mehadrin has developed a plan to meet global demand by ensuring that the fruit can be grown year-round, taking advantage of the changing diplomatic environment.
“Planting the avocados in Morocco is part of a larger plan to be able to supply our European customers more easily than from Israel in terms of geography and in terms of more competitive costs,” the CEO of Mehadrin Shaul Shelach told US-based Jewish newspaper The Algemeiner.
“The strategy to grow avocados outside of Israel will be to have agricultural business in the Southern hemisphere like Africa, and some geographies in Latin America, which will be exactly the opposite part of the year [to Israel] to be harvesting avocados,” he added.
For the company, a large part of revenues comes mostly from citrus fruit, avocados, and medjool dates, according to the newspaper.
The global avocado market is expected to reach a total market size of$17.9 billion (MAD 161.1 billion ) by 2025, compared to $12.8 billion (MAD 115.2 billion ) in 2019, according to figures made available by Globe Newswire. In 2019, Tridge reported that Morocco was becoming one of the fastest-growing avocado suppliers.
