Fair Trade is GLC’s point of differentiation
Fair Trade is GLC’s point of differentiation
Fair Trade certification is a point of differentiation that GLC Cerritos touts as it breaks out of a crowded avocado sales arena.
Giovanni Cavaletto, president of the company that is the U.S. sales/marketing arm of Grupo Los Cerritos, the grower entity based in Ciudad Guzman in Jalisco, Mexico, said GLC is betting on its Fair Trade program to be a difference-maker with its customer base. “We will definitely be talking about it at IFPA,” he said, referring to the The Global Produce & Floral Show, which will be held in Anaheim in mid-October.
GLC Cerritos has launched a Fair Trade-specific campaign called What is your 2 cents? The marketing concept has been designed to draw attention to the minimal investment required to participate. “A retailer can make a very big impact without significantly affecting the consumer price,” said Cavaletto.
Cavaletto revealed the Fair Trade premium, which goes directly to farmworkers, works out to be less than 2 cents per avocado. A committee made of farmworkers and representing their fellow employees at Grupo Los Cerritos receive the funds and determine how it should be spent. The company is now in its second year of offering the program to U.S. customers. During year one, the farmworker committee received about $38,000, which it spent on a food dispensary and a fresh water storage facility for the local community where many of the farmworkers live.
“We’re trying to expand it this year and we are getting great interest from our customers,” Cavaletto said, adding that GLC Cerritos is one of the few, if not the only, avocado supplier that offers Fair Trade fruit on a year-round basis.
For much of its first year in the program, GLC was participating in a very strong avocado market, but Cavaletto said the tide has shifted a bit. “This is the first time we’ve seen an eroding market during the summer in at least several years,” he said in early September.
He explained that Mexico typically has its lowest weekly avocado shipments during the summer months and for the last couple of years that has translated into a strong market. This season has seen solid and increasing supplies from several points of origin, including Peru and Colombia. The longtime avocado marketing veteran said more options tend to drive the market down.
As October begins, Cavaletto said both California and Peruvian fruit will be out of the market and Mexico’s market share will climb back up to 85 percent or more. This may strengthen the market, but he said Mexico’s growers have a large 2025-26 crop so how many loads come in each week will inform the FOB price. He did add that avocado promotions should be plentiful with an excellent portfolio of sizes and many bagged and bulk options coming from Mexico.
Cavaletto noted that the marketing organization Avocados From Mexico has several fall promotions, including utilizing coupons for the commodity-wide Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer-focused promotion, which should help stimulate sales. He also noted that AFM has expanded its Super Bowl football marketing effort to include a plethora of college games during the fall months, each of which is a prime target for guacamole-eating, football-watching gatherings.
Turing his attention to the IFPA show, Cavaletto said GLC Cerritos will have its entire sales and marketing team as well as the company’s owners and its relatively new sustainability director, Armando Garcia, in attendance. “We have just published our first sustainability report, which Armando will be sharing with our industry partners,” he said.
Cavaletto said there are a lot of interesting facts in that report including the nugget that GLC’s water use per avocado is much lower than the industry average. “That’s because we get much more production per acre,” he said. “The tree needs about the same amount of water regardless of your production and our production is much higher than most growers so our relative water use is lower.”
