After Restarting Operations in Panama Chiquita Harvests its First Bananas

The multinational corporation Chiquita is harvesting its first bananas since reactivating its operations in Panama, which it closed in mid-2015. At that time, the company laid off 6,500 workers and reported losses of $75 million amidst a labor strike over social security reforms in the Central American country. Chiquita Panama spokesperson Alexander Gabarrete stated that this “first harvest” since the company’s return to the country is destined for the “domestic market,” as reported Wednesday, from one of the multinational’s packing facilities located in the western province of Bocas del Toro.  According to available information, this first harvest is being bagged at the El Empalme packing plant, which now employs between 20 and 30 people. 

“This serves two purposes: first, to carry out our first harvest, focused on the domestic market, and second, to observe the performance of the packing plants based on the maintenance and repair work that has been carried out,” given that they were closed for several months, Gabarrete stated.  Panamanian authorities have reported that banana exports are expected to begin next February. Before the union strike over social security reform, which took place between April and June of last year, bananas were the country’s leading export.  Chiquita Panama operated approximately 5,000 hectares of banana plantations in Bocas del Toro through a concession, but closed after the company’s union, Sitraibana, began a strike last April that lasted for about two months in protest against a social security reform that was already in effect. 

Following negotiations with the government of Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, Chiquita returned to Panama, but now under a sharecropping model. In this model, the company leases, without transferring ownership, the land to farmers to produce the fruit, which the multinational commits to “buying and regulating its production according to its standards,” according to official information.  More than 1,600 workers have already been hired for Chiquita’s reactivation, a figure that represents more than half of the 3,000 required in the first stage of the process—cleaning and maintaining the plants—while a second phase envisions an additional 2,000 jobs for logistics and fruit production.  It is estimated that “Chiquita will invest $30 million to reactivate production on 5,000 hectares of banana land, and subsequent export” under the new operating model, as officially reported when the company’s return was announced.