Fruitnet

Dr Manuel Madrid has worked for some of the biggest businesses in the fresh produce industry – Syngenta, Driscoll’s, SanLucar and Chiquita to name four giants of the trade – but for more than a decade now he has been running his own consultancy, Fruit Profits. Now, as he reveals in the latest episode of Fruitnet’s conversation series Fruitbox, he’s preparing to relocate from Valencia in Spain to a new base in Costa Rica, from where he will work with a number of fruit companies to help them grow and improve their business. Top of his list, especially for those banana and pineapple companies in the region that face rising costs and diminishing returns, will be to help them identify new ways to secure more value in their supply chains – by introducing better techniques and technology, by switching from traditional crops to higher-value items like mangoes, papayas, avocados or berries, or perhaps even by exploring new markets in other parts of the world. “I think we need to change the model for agriculture and