Anyone who likes coconut water knows well how different the flavor of the fruit is in the coconut and in the long-life packaging – the most common on the market. But you can’t always buy a huge, heavy coconut, open a hole in the shell and drink it.
That is why a new packaging promises to revolutionize the market for this drink, whose consumption increased by 7.7% in volume last year compared to 2021, according to Kantar consultancy.
The novelty actually started in Thailand, where the drink is sold in the peeled fruit. The volume decreases by at least half, which helps not to fill the fridge with few coconuts. The weight goes from 2.5 kilos to 500 grams. And the bark can still be used as ground cover in coconut trees.
“We got to know the packaging in Spain, in fact. But it was a coconut that came from Thailand”, says Diego Mengue who, with his cousin, Marcio Rodrigues Mengue, launched Autenticoco in December 2019.
They were one of the first to put the novelty on the market, which keeps coconut water with its natural taste and does not need preservatives – but it does require refrigeration. The duo, from Cascavel (PR), has been buying and transporting fruit for over ten years.
Another brand that launched, at the same time, coconut in natural packaging, but without the shell, is MyCoco, from Fortaleza. “A friend brought me a Thai coconut from London that was sold there like that, without the shell,” says Rita Luíza Marinho Grangeiro, from Fazenda Grangeiro, a traditional coconut producer in Ceará.
Parties and events
MyCoco only sells its product in Ceará, in Grupo Pão de Açúcar stores and in local supermarket chains. It also provides drinks for parties and events. “We engrave the company’s logo, the name of the birthday boy or bride and groom with a laser on the coconut”, says Rita.
But the coconut at Fazenda Grangeiro is peeled manually – unlike what happens with Autenticoco and Obáh Coco, from Belo Horizonte.
Obah is the newest on the market. It was launched by the Minas Gerais group ManiaFoods six months ago. In both cases – Autenticoco and Obáh – a machine is used that peels the coconut, developed by the two companies separately.
“It was a big challenge”, says Alan Moreira, who also partners with a cousin, Orlando Moreira, in the ManiaFoods partnership. The two invested BRL 2 million to launch Obáh Coco.
Both brands had to discover the best time to harvest the coconut to ensure – not only a good quality and quantity of water for consumption – but so that the coconut does not explode inside the machine, when it comes to peeling.
The two keep the secret of the “peeler” technology under lock and key. Obáh Coco also does not reveal who is the coconut producer partner of the company that does the planting and processing of the fruit, in Sergipe.
Sales of the product have been going well, although they still face some setbacks. Autenticoco, for example, started selling 200 units per day. Today, there are 6,000 to 8,000 daily.
PRODUCT ET. “But we’ve seen it all. On the supermarket shelf, the product is an ET. There are people who think it’s like dry coconut, buy it to make coconut and then complain that it didn’t work. Others ask how we put the water inside the package, if it comes without any holes”, says Marcio Rodrigues.
To preserve the product, when peeling the coconut, the pulp is not perforated. But the brands make a small hole, only in the hard part of the shell, to facilitate the entry of the straw made of biodegradable material that comes with the coconut. It also comes with a circular cardboard support that allows you to leave the drink standing on a table, for example.
For bars, it’s a hand in the wheel. In addition to fitting into any fridge, you don’t need a machete to open it. And it cracks easily if the consumer wants to use the pulp as well.
But, in addition to this barrier of lack of knowledge about the product, another difficulty in marketing the product is the possibility of it spoiling. Refrigerated, coconut lasts up to 30 days – which is very good, if compared to papaya – a fruit that the Mengue cousins are used to working with, which only lasts 10 days.
Problems
But, in the distribution chain, the coconut is often without refrigeration and the brands have no control over this. That’s how one of the pioneers in this way of selling coconut left the market, CocoNude. In addition to having to deal with this problem, the brand, according to market sources, sold the product at a very high price (over BRL 10 in 2019). This caused the item to rotate very slowly on the shelf.
The report tried to contact the founders of CocoNude, but received no response. Another brand, which sells in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, EdenCoco, also did not respond to the report.
On retail shelves, even though it is still an ET, as Mengue says, coconut has the potential to increase coconut consumption in Brazil, according to specialist in the food and beverage market, Adalberto Viviani, from Harriot Consultoria.
According to Horus, which analyzes the proportion of retail items on supermarket invoices, only 1.3% of purchases included the drink in 2022. So, the growth potential is enormous.
The information is from the newspaper The State of S. Paulo.
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