Spain’s Castellón province, a key production area in the country for easy peeler citrus, increased its export sales to the US by 32 per cent during the recent 2010/11 export campaign, indicating the sector’s diversification away from traditional markets.
During the recently-completed season, which ran from early October to late January, producers in the province, which is located in the northern half of the eastern Valencia region, shipped 50,615 tonnes of clementines to the US, representing over 83 per cent of total Spanish clementine exports to North America.
At a press conference, Antonio Lorenzo from the provincial government of Castellón said the shipments to the US had helped turn the 2010/11 season into the “second-most important campaign in the history (of Castellón) in terms of volumes”, following only the 2006/07 season.
However, Mr Lorenzo said that the US was not the only non-European market that the province’s growers had in their sights, explaining that Russia had become “one of the great hopes of the sector”, thanks to the growing acquisitive power of the country’s middle class.
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