ripening

100 million euros of turnover ripening bananas. It is the objective of Musanorte, a company with Canarian roots and headquarters in Vizcaya that has turned a niche as specific and far from the focus as the controlled ripening of fruit into an economic engine for the Orozko region. Your task is not to grow, but what happens after the harvest. In their facilities, the Canarian banana arrives green and comes out ready to eat. Controlled maturation. What Musanorte does with bananas is a process that much of the fruit goes through that we see in supermarkets. So that the bananas arrive at the stores at their peak, with that bright yellow tone without darkening, they are placed in chambers in which the temperature and ethylene is applied to them. Ethylene is what is known as maturation hormone and it is released by vegetables naturally. By adding it artificially, the process is accelerated. The company. Musanorte is a subsidiary of Mercamusa, a company dedicated to the marketing of fruit that also has a ripening plant in Alicante. In 2017, Mercamusa was purchased by Eurobananaa Canarian company that sought to eliminate intermediaries and thus better control quality while saving costs. Production takes place in the Canary Islands and the peninsular offices are dedicated to ripening and packaging. Capacity and investment. With more than 21 ripening chambers and two packaging lines, Musanorte has the capacity to manage 40,000 tons of bananas per yearwhich are added to the 30,000 tons of capacity of the Alicante plant. The Musanorte plant has been operational since 2020, but it was not until recently that it received an investment of 24 million euros that has allowed it to increase its capacity. They hope to reach 100 million euros in turnover and also have announced the creation of 100 new jobs in the region. The banana crisis. In 2025 the price of Canary Islands bananas skyrocketed, reaching 7 euros per kilo. In September we talked about the crisis that the banana production sector was going through: Producing them cost more than what the farmers, who survived thanks to aid from the European Union, ended up receiving. The situation has improved, but not enoughand currently production costs remain very highwhich strains the profitability of producers. Image | Wikipedia In Xataka | Neither patting nor waving them in the air: the science of choosing a good melon in the supermarket