It is called the "butter of the jungle", also known as the "alligator pear" or "butter fruit": avocados have been the superfood par excellence for years. And they no longer come mainly from overseas. A visit to Frutas Montosa, one of the largest avocado producers in Europe.
The soundscape is a contrast like night and day.
In the production hall where avocados - among other things - are turned into guacamole: Conveyor belts whirring, machines clattering. In between, employees routinely check, chop and sort the fruit.
In the avocado grove, a few hundred meters away: silence.
At least at first listen. In fact, a gentle wind makes the dense foliage rustle softly. The voices of the workers only become audible as you get closer. Covering an area of 30 hectares, the ten men are initially hard to make out in the thicket of meter-high trees. This team also works routinely, tree by tree, row by row. It is high season for the avocado harvest - every fruit is picked by hand
Even if the backdrop looks like a tropical jungle, we are in the south of Spain, in the Málaga region, on the premises of Frutas Montosa. The company is one of the most important avocado producers and the largest guacamole producer in Europe. The company employs more than 600 people and has an annual turnover of €150 million. METRO is also one of its customers. Contrary to their sometimes bad reputation, avocados do not necessarily come from overseas. Frutas Montosa cultivates a total of 110 hectares of its own fields around Málaga, in addition to 3,000 partner farmers who deliver their harvest to the company, according to its quality criteria.
This means that 100,000 kilograms of supplied fruit alone arrive at the production facility every day. "To ensure the availability of goods, we have to obtain fruit from various sources," explains Thierry Athimon, Sales Manager at Frutas Montosa. On the one hand, to compensate for harvest fluctuations. Secondly, because the harvest season for avocados in Spain runs from December to April - but demand for the superfood is high all year round. This is why Frutas Montosa also sources fruit from Morocco, South America and Africa.
Whether delivered or from the field next door, all avocados undergo strict quality control - also by hand. The impressive plant is highly technical, equipped with a modern laboratory, automated ripening chambers and conveyor belts. A calibrating machine sorts the fruit by weight, for example, so that the avocados roll off the conveyor belt at the right place for their weight class. However, people are still the most reliable way to check for visual appearance and bruises.
Trained employees sort carefully and quickly on the conveyor belt: any fruit that is not completely flawless ends up on a parallel belt and is processed into guacamole. The flawless avocados are transported onwards according to their degree of hardness - depending on their destination, they continue to ripen in one of the cooling chambers at different temperatures. On average, 1 million kilograms of fruit are always in stock in the various ripening chambers.
Frutas Montosa supplies METRO in France, Austria, Poland and over a dozen other countries. Depending on the transport routes, the degree of ripeness in which the fruit is packaged also varies. Example: Loaded today, the avocados arrive at the METRO wholesale market in the Netherlands two days later. To France, on the other hand, it only takes one day - the fruit is correspondingly pre-ripe. In addition to the pure avocados, Frutas Montosa also produces guacamole and avocado pulp - avocado pulp for further processing - in mild or spicy varieties for its own METRO Chef brand. Practical for use in the food service industry, because any fruit that does not have to be laboriously peeled and pitted saves time in the kitchen.
In the guacamole production facility next door, employees also halve the avocados by hand on a piecework basis. This could also be done by machine. "But we ensure the highest quality by cutting them by hand," emphasizes Athimon. "It's very time-consuming - but our guacamole doesn't contain any fibers or inferior pulp." The in-house laboratory next door also carries out random microbiological tests on both the finished products and the delivered fruit: The percentage of so-called dry matter is important - the higher, the better, because the more flavorful the fruit becomes. "It must be at least 23%, and at the end of the season the value can rise to 29%," explains Athimon.
As popular as the avocado is, it is also criticized. For example, because of its water consumption. "But at Montosa, we take great care of our water resources", says Athimon. The fields use a modern irrigation system that measures moisture in two layers of soil and only waters as needed. "In addition, we use 100% of the harvest from our partner farmers so that all the fruit is used. Fruit that does not meet commercial criteria for sale is used to make guacamole (external defects and small sizes). Furthermore, the skins and pits are used to make avocado oil", explains Athimon.
Whether avocados, citrus fruits or fish: METRO relies on so-called common sourcing for its global procurement. In other words: International Trading Offices (ITOs) pool demand from more than 30 METRO countries. The ITOs source the products directly from local suppliers - without intermediaries. This not only guarantees variety, freshness and quality, but also price advantages from which customers in turn benefit. In addition to the Spanish trading office in Valencia, which specializes in fruit and vegetables, there are other trading offices for meat and fish in the Netherlands and France. Global and local procurement in the countries complement each other. Depending on the season and availability, products such as tomatoes either come from regional cultivation or - in the winter months, for example - from Spain or Portugal. METRO procures around 80% of its food locally, with the ITOs sourcing around 20%.
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