Due to the earthquake of Jan 12^th and its devastating consequences in many sectors, the official ‘mango season’ has been pushed to the first week of April. By then, all exporters will need to be able to collect from their suppliers, process the mangos, and prepare them for shipping.

Carifresh, as the third largest exporter of Mango in Haiti, contributes through its purchasing power to the employment of many growers in various regions of the country. Carifresh infrastructure used to unload mango trucks was destroyed by the earthquake leaving mango crates and a forklift under the rubble. The past month, they have been cleaning the portion of the plant that collapsed and still in the process of salvaging what can be saved.

In order to start the season in a few weeks, it is imperative that Carifresh be able to receive process, pack, and ship the mangos, it is planning on buying from its suppliers. So far the plant is halfway through the cleaning process. However, the office still needs to be equipped with the right supplies, which were also damaged.  Furthermore, Carifresh also needs to pay the mango exporter association fees, despite being the only one with damaged facilities. FOMIN expects USDA to waive export fees to Haitian mango exporters given that this cost constitutes a disadvantage for the exporters that were affected by the earthquake.

The managers of Carifresh have asked to be provided with offices supplies that fell and were damaged during the earthquake: computers, printers and a photocopier. In addition, they suffered losses in their plant equipment such as; a 160Kw electrical generator and a forklift were destroyed since the roof fell in part of their facility, these are also required for the plant to start functioning. Finally, Carifresh needs to recover the mango crates used for handling the fruits which contributes to fewer amount of mango being affected due to poor handling. The company crates were destroyed as a wall fell down where they were stored.  Carifresh has agreed with FOMIN that the crates to be provided with these emergency allocation resources will be owned by the small producers mango associations that will be formed to manage approximately 8 collection centers to be built with the Social Entrepreneurship Program project; in the meantime Carifresh will keep them in trust.