The global value chain begins on the plantations. (for a listing of the types of companies involved in this chain, and examples of them, click here). Some plantations cover many hundreds of square miles, with rails for transportation, irrigation, and trained workers all inhabiting the ideally flat soil. Approximately 80 percent of this farmland is used for growing bananas, while the other 20 percent is for packaging centers and other buildings, such as offices, cleaning stations, and housing facilities.

Once the bananas are of the appropriate maturity level (usually green), they are cut and sent as an entire stem to the packaging station. To be prepared to go onto the transport ship, they are washed, scrutinized by quality control, and then packaged into cartons. "For bananas, transport, marketing, and shipping take the place of processing…which is still where the profits lie…" (Roche 115) Firms that come up with the best and cheapest way to ship bananas will have a decided advantage in this industry, since the transporting is the real key to this global value chain. As the table below shows, the banana is a fruit that is not tolerant to high transport costs, unlike say something more sturdy, such as strawberries.

The banana is a very fragile fruit. It must be kept at a certain temperature, be protected from bruising, and have the right mixture of gases to prevent the fruit from spoiling. The ease in which it perishes causes the shipping and distribution part of the global value chain to be the most important and the highest value added part of it. The next step is to get the fruit, under a controlled temperature, to the ripener. The ripener gets the pulp temperatures of the banana to 13.6 degrees Celsius to minimize damage. The transport vessels that are used to get the fruit to the ripeners have refrigerated containers inside them to keep the fruit from ripening too much in transit, but the temperatures must be kept at a delicate balance to not damage the fruit by chilling. Furthermore, amounts of oxygen and carbon dioxide can be added or removed from the refrigerated cargo area to further retard or enhance ripening.

One of the most important parts of ensuring quality control from this point to the ripener is the handling of the boxes. The slightest drop or bump can bruise the banana, ruining it. Once at the ripener, the bananas are generally ripened for four days before being sent to retailers. Some companies claim that their ripening process will provide longer shelf life, such as Fyffes, which uses a pressurized air system. They claim that their system provides two extra days of shelf life for bananas. These ripening rooms are quite complicated, with the numerous instruments needed for temperature, gas, and banana temperature control.

After the specified time in the ripener, bananas must again go through a quality control check, and again great care must be used when handling the bananas. Finally, the bananas are sent to retailers, usually still not fully ripe. Companies advise the retailers to just leave them at room temperature if they are not ripe when they arrive.

The banana is a crop that must be harvested once every seven or ten days, and then sent by ship to the destination countries. The fruit must arrive green to the retailer for ripening, so it reaches the consumer at just the right time. This constant flow requires a great amount of integration between the stages, and thus favors vertical integration. While independent firms do exist in this industry (transporters, ripeners), some of these companies may be under more or less direct control by the large multinationals.

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