Spanish soft fruit growers have ended their 2010/11 campaign on a downbeat note, with prices and orders falling sharply during May as a consequence of a number of major export destinations closing their doors to Spanish products during the E.coli crisis.
Producers’ organisation Freshuelva, which represents growers in Spain’s principal berry production area of Huelva, said that although turnover for strawberries had risen by 4.7 per cent to €343m, total sales for the season had been adversely affected by the outbreak.
For the recently-completed 2010/11 campaign, the association said there had been a slight increase in strawberry volumes to 245,000, up by 2 per cent compared with the season before from a total production area of 6,400ha.
However, the performance was not repeated in other berry categories.
Although raspberry production rose by 38 per cent to 11,350 tonnes, total turnover for the product dropped by 16 per cent year-on-year to €71m.
Similarly, blueberry and blackberry sales also fell by 25 per cent each, a result especially significant for blueberries, where the production area and volumes increased by 16 per cent and 75 per cent respectively.
Freshuelva blamed the poor sales performance on the effects of the E.coli crisis in June, during which a number of countries, including Russia and the United Arab Emirates, temporarily closed their borders to Spanish imports, while there was a major drop in consumption of Spanish products in Europe during the month.
Although the majority of the strawberry campaign missed the crisis, the falsely-reported link between Spanish cucumbers and the German E.coli outbreak was made public during the peak season period for the other berries.
More positively, Freshuelva said Spanish exporters had made significant progress opening new market niches for their products, exporting berries for the first time to Malaysia and Singapore, while shipments to Dubai, Brazil and Russia were also increased before the E.coli-related bans were imposed.
