MSC’s logistics division, Medlog, has opened its first fruit packaging facility in Peru, investing US$20m of its own funds.
Located in the Piura Futura industrial park, the facility serves avocado, grape, and mango producers and exporters in the northern macroregion of Peru.
By taking high-resolution images of the fruit and evaluating each aspect of their appearance and quality, as well as detecting any stains or damages, the calibration line and an artificial vision system are able to classify and separate fruit according to size and weight.
The area of the plant is 35,000m², and the plant is merely 35km from the port of Paita. Due to the significant fruit export volume of Piura, the location is particularly advantageous. October through December is grapes season, followed by December through March for mangos and March through August for avocados.
“With this opening, we’re entering the packing sector, which is perfectly complementary with MSC’s reefer ocean transportation services, allowing us to get closer to our fruit clients, as we provide this additional solution, on top of our already solid presence in the reefer sector,”
Shippers strive to keep up with market trends, so that they can assist their customers in reaching key trade centres.
As a result of extreme demand, cargo congestion triggered by congestion in supply chains worldwide has been particularly challenging for the produce industry over the past year and a half.
To respond to the operational disruption caused by Covid-19, ocean carriers have deployed all available capacity. The MSC says it has worked closely with all stakeholders to address this issue in an efficient and effective manner.
“In the first half of 2021, we started eight new services, deployed available vessel capacity, and provided hundreds of thousands of additional containers to help respond to the huge demand for cargo transportation in an extremely challenging and congested market,” the company stated.
“We have also been diversifying the portfolio of available ports to alleviate some of the pressure from the more congested areas, rerouting cargo through other gateways, adding terminals, and diversifying inland with the railroads.”
“We’ve done our utmost best to keep customers’ reefer operations functioning amid the pandemic. The growing demand has also opened up new market possibilities, which we have been able to support thanks to our continual investment in the best technologies for refrigerated transport solutions,” the company added.
