Banana giant slips up

Chiquita, the US company at the heart of the transatlantic banana war that led to sanctions against European luxury goods producers, today filed for bankruptcy protection.

The action was taken to reduce the Cincinnati based company’s debt by almost £500m.

Chiquita has struggled financially in recent years because of a worldwide glut of bananas and a drop in their prices, and a long battle over European banana import quotas that Chiquita regarded as unfair.

The European Union’s quotas cost Chiquita millions of dollars, the company said.

The company has 40,000 employees world wide, most of them in Latin America where it has thousands of acres of banana groves.