The mild winter has brought an early end to US-bound citrus exports from the Spanish port of Castellón this season, according to a report in El Periodico Mediterraneo.
Fricasa, the coldstorage terminal at the port from where the fruit is stored and loaded, said the unseasonably high temperatures had resulted in the region’s main clementine variety, Clemenules, spoiling on trees, preventing shipments to the US port of Philadelphia from continuing through January, as it had in previous years.
The trade has been in decline for some time as US importers increasingly favour late season Southern Hemisphere clementines over Spain’s early offering. Figures from the Institute of Foreign Trade (Icex) show that between October 2014 and January 2015, 32,520 tonnes of citrus were shipped to the US from the port of Castellón – way below the 75,000 tonnes shipped at the beginning of the 2000s. In the four seasons since 2010/11, volumes have dropped 32 per cent.
Initial figures for 2015/16 show that this trend is likely to continue: shipments during October stood at 2,091 tonnes, a 28 per cent decrease on the previous season.
This is partly due to the fact that no Marisol clementines were exported from the province for the second consecutive year, having lost out to Southern Hemisphere supplies.
The number of vessels chartered this season was lower than in previous years, but Fricasa claimed that the volume of fruit on each was higher.
