How Pakistani mangoes reach the UK, UAE and US
Picking, grading, treatment, packing and freight. The general process behind a box of mangoes that started on a tree in Sindh.
Why it is harder than it sounds
A mango is a difficult thing to export. It is soft, it bruises, it ripens on a clock that started the moment it left the tree, and it is grown thousands of miles from the people who want to eat it. Everything in the chain below exists to deal with that.
What follows is the general process for getting Pakistani mangoes to the UK, the UAE and the United States. It is how the trade works in general rather than a description of our own operation, so read it as a guide to the chain the fruit passes through rather than a specification of ours. If you need our specifics, ask us.
Picking
Fruit for export is picked firmer than fruit for the local market. A mango that is ready to eat today will be unsellable by the time it reaches London. So it comes off the tree mature but hard, with the ripening still ahead of it.
Picking is done by hand, with the stem cut rather than pulled, and the fruit is kept out of the sun from the moment it is off the tree. Mangoes are also usually left stem down for a while so the sap runs out, because sap on the skin burns a mark into it that shows up days later.
Grading
Everything is sorted by size, weight and appearance. Anything with a bruise, a blemish, sap burn or an odd shape comes out of the export line and goes to the local market instead. This is why export-grade fruit costs more: you are paying for everything that was rejected as much as for what was kept.
Grading is also what lets an importer order consistently. A buyer taking a pallet needs to know roughly how many fruit are in a box and that the next box looks like the last one.
Treatment
Most countries will not accept mangoes without a treatment step, because of fruit fly. The common method is hot water treatment, where the fruit is held in water at a controlled temperature for a set time, long enough to deal with any larvae but not so long that it cooks the flesh.
Some destinations require irradiation instead, and the requirements differ by country and change over time. The treatment has to be documented, and the paperwork travels with the consignment.
Packing
Fruit is packed in single layers, usually in trays or moulded inserts so no mango sits on another one. Boxes are ventilated. Packing happens as close to the orchard as possible, because every extra handling step is another chance to bruise the fruit.
Air or sea
Fresh mangoes to the UK and the Gulf almost always go by air. The fruit is in the destination market within a day or two of leaving the packhouse, which is the only way it arrives in a condition anyone wants to buy.
Sea freight is cheaper by a wide margin and is used on shorter routes where the transit time works, particularly into the Gulf. It demands much tighter control of temperature and of how ripe the fruit was when it was loaded.
Arrival
On arrival the consignment clears customs and plant health inspection. From there it goes to a ripening facility or straight to the importer, depending on how firm it was loaded and how quickly it is needed.
By the time a box reaches a shop in Bradford or Dubai, it has usually been handled by the grower, a packhouse, a treatment facility, a freight forwarder, an importer and a distributor. The fruit in that box left a specific orchard on a specific day, and almost nobody along the way knows which one. That is the part we are trying to change.
If you are buying
Importers, wholesalers and retailers can ask us for the 2027 export sheet, which sets out varieties, windows, pack sizes and what we can commit to. UK buyers can go directly to Shunaid Memon.