Exportadora Santa Cruz began as a grape and avocado grower twelve years ago, then, seeking to enhance their distribution channels, became a fruit exporting company. The company has been able to develop a 400-strong network of fruit producers throughout Chile. Santa Cruz has implemented the use of high technology at the production level and in their packing plants and coolers, in order to help them to provide their fruit to world markets, such as the United States, Europe and to a lesser extent the Far East and Latin America.

Santa Cruz has been able to work a full twelve months out of the year, enabling the company to offer a wide-ranging list of products for export, including winter fruits such as avocados, lemons and persimmons.

The Santa Cruz Company is the largest exporter of avocados and persimmons in the Chilean market, and second largest in lemons. Among the other fruits that they export are avocados, kiwis, grapes, lemons, plums, nectarines, clementines, oranges, persimmons and grapefruits.

During last season, Santa Cruz exported 1.8 billion boxes out of which 1.1 million boxes were avocados and about 220,000 boxes (17 kilos per box) were lemons. The United States is the primary market, representing about 80 percent of all of the company’s exports. It also represents 96 percent of avocado production, 65 percent of grapes and plums and 40 percent of lemons. “We believe that we are prepared to compete against countries like Mexico in the avocado segment, because our freight costs to the U.S. are similar to those of Mexico,” explained Guillermo Correa, CEO of Santa Cruz.

The Santa Cruz company is dedicated to meeting or exceeding international standards of quality and is in the process of becoming an ISO 9000 organization. “We have total control of the pesticides used in the fields,” says Correa. “We comply with all the sanitary requirements of markets like the United States, Japan and the European Union. To ensure quality, we have key checkpoints for quality control that begin at the harvest level, and go on through the packaging process, when we put the fruit in the containers and finally, when they arrive to the port of entry, where we have external entities that issue a final report.”

Correa points out that the Santa Cruz company prefers to not operate their own plantations in order to ensure that equal treatment is given to all producers, based on the fundament of quality and market conditions. This is one of the reasons why Santa Cruz has excellent relationships with its producers and clients.

According to Correa, Santo Cruz has been growing steadily at 12 percent per year and, in order to maintain this rate, is now focusing on expanding their presence in the market, by placing a strong emphasis on reliability, prestige and quality.
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