Ripening
- Once the shipment has cleared customs, it is trucked to the ripening rooms
- The bananas are put into pressurized chambers and exposed to ethylene gas to ripen - this process takes 2-3 days
- Once yellow, they are delivered to distribution centers, wholesalers, and retailers
Retail
- Increased competition between large fruit to remain the preferred suppliers of supermarkets has led to the governance structures of global banana chains being increasingly by retailers instead of integrated fruit companies.
- Retailers enjoy significant buyer power. They arrange procurement and tender processes to extract the most competitive conditions, they multi-source, easily and frequently switch volumes between banana suppliers, they are ready to sponsor alternative suppliers’ growth and/or to start direct sourcing in the tropics