We are in the middle of the season for organic grapes from Italy. A good time for a trip to Apulia situated at the ‘heel’ of the Italian ‘boot'. All year round there the farmers of the Italian cooperative ABA Mediterranea grow a diverse range of organic fruits for those at home and abroad. The cooperative is made up of 20 family businesses. From June until late October they supply organic grapes under the brand ‘ABA Bio’ to BioTropic.
This September, the time has come: Our very own mango sorting machine gets delivered and will be assembled by dedicated staff in our warehouse. As soon as that’s done, the test phase begins – and eventually everything should be finely tuned and running smoothly. We hope to deliver our first ripened organic mangoes in November.
We were in Senegal in July and visited our Senegalese mango supplier Buur Sine. This time, our Dutch employee Joep van Koevorden and our Quality Controller Rick Nap were on-site. Together with Amacodou Diouf, Chairman of the Buur Sine cooperative, they witnessed the harvesting and loading of the organic mangoes. At Buur Sine, the mango season starts at the end of June and runs until the end of August.
We at Bio Tropic simply just don't purchase any sort of bio fruit and vegetables. It is important for us to get to know our producers locally and to look after them later on a regular basis whether they are professionally organised like some Italian family run bio businesses or even smaller producers with only 3 hectares of available land. We have known most of our producers for a number of years, and so over a period of time a working partnership has developed.
If anyone asks our employees what their favourite part of working for BioTropic is, the answer is nearly always the same: The global nature of BioTropic.
Another global network is emerging with our new branch in Costa Rica. BioTropic currently has seven offices around the world – five in Europe, one in South America, and the new addition in Central America. This means that we can operate directly on location with producers, and meet them face to face.
