Planting bananas

FRUTERA works with finest seeds carefully selected and imported from Israel. The variety of banana planted is the Williams’ banana, which adapts easily to the ecosystem on the southern coast of Guatemala.

Growing bananas

• The seeds spend five to six weeks in the nursery.
• At this stage, the seeds are carefully supervised, monitored, and watered daily.
• After six weeks in the nursery, the young plants are transferred to the field where they are planted at a density of 1650 trees per hectare.
• Before beginning the process of planting, the soil is prepared to prevent flooding.

Protection of the fruit

• The cluster of bananas is under constant observation during the first three weeks by three different specialists who monitor their progress on a daily basis.
• The first seven days after the flower blooms, it is covered with a recyclable agribon bag. The bag’s function is to protect the fruit from insects, dust, and direct sunlight.
• The second step is to deflower the cluster, which is done in three different stages to prevent the growth of fungus and possible scarring of the fruit.
• The third step is to thin out the “hands” of bananas, which occurs between 14 and 21 days. At this stage, three banana “hands” are cut in order to have more space and allow the remaining fruit to grow bigger. It also helps to prevent scarring during the growth of the remaining bananas.
• The last step is to attach a colored ribbon to each plant. All clusters are marked with a colored ribbon to identify the week they were born to be able to harvest those twelve weeks later.

Banana harvest

• The fruit is transported to the packing plant in special trays. This type of packaging requires more people and more time; however, it allows us to deliver better quality fruit to the marketplace.

Processing of bananas for the marketplace

We train hundreds of workers to be able to give our customers the best quality bananas available. FRUTERA utilizes experts in every stage of the production process:

Stem reception stage: the stage where the fruit comes in from the field. The clusters are numbered and calibrated to check if the fruit has the level of maturity required.

Deflowering: is the process of removing the flowers from the cluster of bananas so the fruit does not continue on to the next stage with any residual flowers.

Water tanks: is where the employees remove individual bunches of bananas from the plant’s stem.

Selection Area: these people are responsible for selecting and classifying the fruit with the strictest quality parameters to fulfill the needs of our customers.

Sealing Area: the fruit is labeled.

Weighing area: the fruit is weighed according to customer specifications.

Packaging area: Finally, the fruit is packed and weighed again and then put on pallets. This phase calculates the total amount of the freight and affixes the bar codes and other data, to further control the production.