With good quality expected this season, hopes are high for the Belgian Conference pear on Asian markets, with Thailand recently opening up, while airfreighted vegetables continue to find a place on the market
Belgian exporters are currently setting up programmes for the new Conference pear season and readying shipments for global markets, including Asia, according to Marc Evrard of Belgian Fruit Valley. “The quality of the fruit is good this season,” he says, “better than last year. Everything is looking good when it comes to taste, Brix and the size of the fruit.”
Evrard reveals that current prices may not be as high as last season, but doesn’t consider this a major problem. “I think for some export markets, the fruit is still rather expensive,” he says.
The Conference pear is the main Belgian export to the Asian region, and efforts are constantly being made to open up new markets for the product.
“Thailand only opened up for Belgian Conference pears a couple of months ago, so our exporters are targeting that market at the moment,” says Laurent De Smedt of cooperative BelOrta. “Next season we want to have at least 10-20 containers there to start opening up the market. We are also looking at Vietnam, including for vegetables, which are mostly able to access that market.”
When it comes to vegetables, Belgian exporters face major hurdles to access certain markets, including China, due to specific phytosanitary requirements.
“We have customers that do mixed pallets of vegetables by air to markets including South Korea, Japan and Taiwan,” says De Smedt. “We send Belgian endives and brassicas. We are working on bell peppers, for which the protocol is almost finished. For tomatoes it will take another two years probably. There may also be potential for leeks. However, the short shelf-life of these products makes it too risky to send by container. Perhaps it’s possible for some root vegetables. Even then you need the right packaging and to keep it at the right temperature and humidity. But there is always a limit. Most vegetables won’t last until they arrive in Shanghai, for example, and if they do survive the journey, the shelf-life will be short.”
Air shipments have been unaffected by issues in the Red Sea, which have extended the journey time by sea between Europe and Asia, but volume-wise, according to De Smedt, air cargo is completely different to seafreight.
“The space is extremely limited for airfreight and the price is very high,” he says. “But it’s very encouraging that our exporters are still able to send produce this way despite the high cost.”
