The Canary Islands banana sector is experiencing some of the “most difficult” market conditions of recent years, a situation that has already forced producers on the Spanish islands to remove 16,000 tonnes of fruit from sale.
The combination of the economic recession, which has affected consumption levels in Spain, along with the entry of greater volumes of Latin American bananas as a result of the lowering of tariff barriers have both badly affected Canaries growers, said regional association Asprocan.
The organisation’s president, Francisco Rodriguez, told Fruitnet.com that pressure from the two factors had plunged the Canaries sector into a “critical situation”, which had led producers to remove fruit from the market to avoid a major fall in prices.
“For Asprocan, the situation that the Canaries banana sector has gone through since December last year is the worst that we have been faced with for many years,” he said.
Rodriguez placed much of the blame for the sector’s difficulties on the European Union’s decision to reduce its import tariff regime for Latin American bananas, whose subsequent “massive entry” into Europe had resulted in “far lower banana prices”.
Last year, the Canaries banana sector produced 364, 834t of fruit, by far the majority of which was sold in the Spanish domestic market.
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