Chiquita Case Essay

621 Words3 Pages
Case questions: 1) What role has politics played in the history of Chiquita Brands, and its predecessor, the United Fruit Company (UFC)? Answer: United Fruit Company (UFC) adopted a vertically integrated business model as soon as it started to grow. UFC wanted to avoid the impact of any kind of threat on the bananas production process. The influent company was named « el pulpo » to image the impact it had on the Latin American economy. As soon as they were involved in the economic environment, politics connections started to be unavoidable. They created a situation where « Bananas Republics » had to cooperate in order to maintain their level of exportation and hard currency flow. Moreover bananas business was very high demanding in capital and very risky. The bananas plantations were located in distant area and in the jungle. Without any support of politicians it would have been very difficult to obtain and keep the different authorization needed. Therfore as an example when the « Green Pope » (Minor Keith UFC chairman) had any kind of request such as construction permits he just had to ask for. In 1911 UFC overcame the political limit by being implicated in a conspiracy in order to solve some problem that could have hampered UFC expansion. Chiquita inherited the strong political influence of UFC but started to act with more diplomacy by using lobbying and political tools to increase pressure on international relationships. Chiquita used legal political instruments to complain about discriminatory framework of the EU regime. To sum up politics are well rooted in Chiquita’s management and instead of finding an alternative to the strong EU rules such as acquiring small producers to increase the exportation quotas or trying enter new markets using the strong power Chiquita had, they decided to continue to fight against and with politics. 2) What role has
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