New research released by Euromonitor and published exclusively by Eurofruit at the Global Berry Congress showed that strawberry and blueberry sales in all regions of the world were up in volume terms last year and are expected to continue rising over the coming four years, countering theories that growth may have plateaued in the world's developed markets and underlining the potential prospects for expansion in emerging consumer markets.
The figures showed, for example, that the strawberry market in eastern Europe was set to grow by 18.8 per cent to just below 300,000 tonnes by 2017, just outdoing the 16.4 per cent growth anticipated in Latin America, where the market is set to be expand to 393,000 tonnes over the same period.
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For blueberries, for which Euromonitor's data are combined with those for cranberries, market expansion is forecast at an even faster rate, with growth of more than 20 per cent expected in western Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Australasia and the Middle East and Africa by 2017.
The Asia-Pacific market for fresh blueberries, currently around 185,100 tonnes, looks poised to grow dramatically, having already overtaken North America and likely to rival eastern Europe in terms of size in four years' time. In Australasia, meanwhile, an embryonic blueberry market is predicted to more than quadruple in size to 40,500 tonnes.
China's own blueberry production is projected to reach 50,000 tonnes by 2016, according to the Chilean Ministry of Agriculture. Last year, the country imported 480 tonnes of the fruit from Chile, 193 tonnes from North Korea and 18 tonnes from the US.
Speaker presentations from this year's Global Berry Congress are available to download from the official event website at www.berrycongress.com
