Word: chiquitas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Chiquita nevertheless cracked the British market through its ownership of a British subsidiary, Fyffes Ltd., which grew bananas in the former British colonies. British consumers paid a relatively high price for those bananas, but Chiquita's margin from this trade was still small compared with the profits from its efficient plantations in Latin America. By 1986, as the European Union began to take shape, Chiquita executives hoped the restrictions would be lifted and its low-cost bananas could take over the market. So Chiquita sold off its Fyffes subsidiary...
Meanwhile, in a tariff-free and quota-free Germany, Chiquita had seized 45% of the market. Envisioning the same potential for all of Europe, as well as the former Soviet satellites that were opening up, Chiquita and its chief competitor, Dole Food, decided in the early 1990s to pour more money into production and flood the European market with bananas. With more bananas than buyers, prices--and hence profits--plummeted...
Worse still, the E.U. announced that instead of an open market, which Chiquita had hoped for, it would expand the old system, with quotas and tariffs on bananas brought in from Latin America and preferential treatment for bananas grown in the former colonies. The new rules went into effect on July...
They certainly should not have come as a surprise to Chiquita, the U.S. government or anyone else. The signs had been clear for years that Europe intended to continue giving preferential status to bananas from its former colonies. An investment report prepared in October 1990 by the Wall Street firm of Shearson Lehman Bros., Inc., predicted that Europe, contrary to Chiquita's hopes, would maintain the status quo for years to come...
...Even Chiquita knew at the time what it faced. In its 1992 annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company acknowledged that "although we will oppose these restrictive policies in the proper legal forums, we are prepared to adapt to this new regulated environment." By this time, Dole, the world's second largest banana producer and Chiquita's only real rival, had hedged its bets and arranged to acquire bananas from those countries with no tariffs and generous import quotas...