Production-wise, the Brazilian mango industry is gearing up for a good year in 2011, with total output forecast to reach 30m cartons.
The export market, however, could receive less volume as high shipping costs and an unfavourable exchange rate continue to make it increasingly difficult for exporters to make money, especially on the US market.
According to the National Mango Board (NMB) in the US, Brazil intends to ship slightly less volume to the US than last year, when volume totalled 6.1m cartons.
“The weather has been very favourable for both quality and volume – in fact, local production in August is expected to be 20 per cent higher than last year,” Wendy McManus, NMB’s director of marketing told Fruitnet.com. “However, this probably won’t translate into higher volumes coming to the US.”
With increased competition on the US market from other suppliers – notably Peru – the situation for Brazilian mangoes looks to persist in the future, according to local sources.
As a result, a number of Brazil’s biggest exporters have decided to no longer ship to the US, focusing instead almost exclusively on the European market.
And although Brazil has a strong internal market, even this is not big enough to support the volume of mangoes produced during the second half of the year.
“If conditions remain the same then volumes have to come down,” explained Gilmar Mello of Amazon Produce Network, which markets around a third of the total Brazilian volume bound for the US.
A full report will be published in the August/September issue of Americafruit Magazine.
