About us
Behind this shop there’s a family from Albalat de la Ribera who have spent their whole lives among orange trees. It’s worth knowing who we are before ordering a box, because it explains why this shop works the way it does.
Agustín Giner and Josefa Sifre. Everything else comes from here.
It all starts with Agustín and Josefa
Agustín has spent his life in the fields, growing his own orange trees. He also spent years in Barcelona, with a fruit and vegetable stall in Mercabarna, and later buying oranges wholesale. Which is to say: he knows this product from the root of the tree to the counter where somebody picks it up.
Josefa worked as a packer in orange warehouses. It’s a trade nobody talks about any more: the packer decides, piece by piece, which fruit goes into the box and which stays out. Years of a trained eye for telling apart the fruit that will arrive well from the fruit that won’t.
If this shop strikes you as odd — no oranges in August, boxes with fruit of different sizes — it’s because of them. That’s how it’s done when fruit is picked for someone in particular and not to fill a warehouse.
Why we sell it ourselves
In 2011 their son Adrián set up Econatur Fruits with a simple idea: that his parents’ work should reach whoever eats the fruit intact, without passing through four pairs of hands that each take a cut and a week in cold storage along the way.
Orders leave from this warehouse in Albalat de la Ribera. There’s no intermediate depot and no distribution centre: it’s picked, your box is packed and it sets off. That’s why we can tell you the day the fruit you’re eating was cut, which is something almost nobody can say.
If you want the whole reasoning, it’s in From tree to table.
Who's behind your box
There are only a few of us, and every one of us handles the fruit at some point.
Adrián Giner
Puts the puzzle together every week. Decides what gets picked and when. He set this up in 2011 so his parents' fruit would reach whoever eats it intact.
Rafael Presencia
Runs the picking and the dispatch. Twenty years in fruit production. What's cut in the morning leaves in the afternoon.
Verónica Estruch
Checks what goes into your box. Quality control: size, labelling and the state of the fruit. What Josefa used to do, under another name.
Noelia Vidal
The one who answers you. If you write, call or send a WhatsApp asking about your order, you're talking to her.
What changes when you buy here
It isn’t a turn of phrase: these are three concrete consequences of working this way.
Picked when you order it
We don't have fruit sitting in cold storage waiting for a buyer. Your box is picked the day we prepare the order.
There isn't always everything
We work by season, so there are months without mandarins and months without persimmons. What's available right now is in the shop.
No wax, no treatments
Nothing is applied after picking. That's why the peel can be zested, and why they're not all equally good-looking.
Shall we see what's in this week?
The shop only shows what’s being picked right now. If you’re looking for something that isn’t there, write to us and we’ll tell you when its season starts.