Tempers are flaring across Europe’s stonefruit sector as growers in France, Spain and Italy have found their returns wholly insufficient to meet production costs this season. Grower leaders have insisted their sectors are in crisis and that markets across Europe are failing to offer reasonable returns to cover input and transport costs.
Bruno Dupont, president of France’s National Federation of Fruit Producers, has said his growers are at breaking point. He has admitted that all fruit growers in France are finding the going tough, but that the impact has been felt especially keenly by stonefruit growers, stating: “It is catastrophic for cherries, but also for peaches, nectarines, plums and apricots. We have never seen so many summer fruits experiencing crisis at the same time.”
The problem is all the worse for growers as many of them produce several different stonefruit lines, but this season cannot rely on one product making up for another. The main reasons are excessive supply, decreased purchasing power and bad weather in July, as well as strong supplies from Spain, where growers are facing their own problems. “We are not fighting against Spanish growers, who are in the same situation as us, but against those who profit from the situation,” says Dupont. “What we need to do is find some common ground among stonefruit producers in Europe and work together.”
Trade sources in the UK agree that this is one of the worst years for French stonefruit for a while. “Growers can’t cover the costs of transport and fertiliser, and there is even a shortage of workers in France, which has compounded an already difficult situation,” says one insider.
Poor weather conditions have also exacerbated a difficult season in terms of pricing and returns. “Product has just been dumped because it’s not worth picking,” says one trader. “We have found an unbelievable lot of problems because of wasp damage. The shelf life of French fruit has been very poor this year. Normally, we expect peaches and nectarines to hold for up to six or seven days, but this year it is just three or four days.”
Italian producers have similarly borne the brunt of poor weather, especially in Emilia-Romagna, the country’s main stonefruit region.
Meanwhile, Spanish growers have also declared themselves to be at crisis point. Prices paid to many are not covering the cost of production and grower leaders have been holding emergency talks in Madrid under the auspices of national producer-exporter federation Fepex. The worst affected regions are Extremadura, Murcia, Catalonia and Aragon. Growers complain that they are suffering fierce competition on export markets from Italy and have even faced roadblocks set up by stonefruit producers in France as they struggle to transport produce.
A spokesman for grower group Afruex in Extremadura says: “The situation is right on the limit of survival for many companies, as they are not even achieving the minimum prices required to cover their costs and some cannot even harvest their products, as there is no room for them in packhouses.”
Exporters say that the overall quality of stonefruit crops from Spain this season has been “very good in general”, including peach, nectarine, flat peaches and nectarines, apricots and plums. Murcian supplies of Pavia peach, plum and nectarine will continue until September and plums will go through until October.
However, FPJ sources admit that despite decent-quality fruit this season, the Spanish are in real difficulties. “If returns that do not cover the cost of production and leave nothing for replanting and investment - let alone profit - is crisis point, then we are at crisis point,” says one trader. “It is very important to remember that with stonefruit, it is about whole crop sale to make the return. The best fruit may go to a top-end retailer who will pay well, but if the other fruit is not paid reasonable prices, then it is not worth doing.”
Tough pricing policies from distribution outlets across Europe are making the situation untenable for many. “Prices have been at rock bottom - our Spanish client stopped sending two weeks ago because the prices are so poor and the prices coming out of the Netherlands have been really low,” says one importer.
Another agrees. “We strive to achieve the best quality possible at the most competitive cost,” he says. “But while distribution outlets feel that they can dictate their margin and the final price, there is not much future. Retail prices in Germany for nectarines at €0.66/kg are ruinous. Aldi is selling all over Europe at €0.49 a punnet for various fruits. This sends an awful message to the consumer - even if Aldi supports this price to some extent. There are a number of large retail chains taking advantage of the current situation.”
In the UK, says one insider, there are “a lot of different customers, and there are some who are treating the supply base better than others”. “Arrogance is the word that springs to mind to describe some of them - big and small,” says the source. “It seems there needs to be more shortages and disaster for the tide to turn. Every time I have been to the UK recently everything is on a special or multi-buy offer. This is very confusing for the consumer and, long term, very negative.
“Providing food for Europe’s tables should be a team effort and everybody should be allowed a sustainable return in relationship, with risk taken. At the moment, some distributors have got very fat abusing the rest of chain. There are very few distributors who do not demand rebates and pay slowly.”
Consumer demand for stonefruit has also been slow in the UK market, as shoppers look for deals and damp weather has conspired to keep them away from the stonefruit aisles. Coupled with “poor returns” and a “stagnant market”, it has simply been an extraordinarily difficult year on stonefruit, say traders. “Last year, we averaged 15,000 trays of peaches and 14,500 trays of nectarines a week - this week, we are down to 7,200 on peaches and 6,850 on nectarines,” says one source. “However, sales of our root crops have gone through the roof. It’s just not a normal summer.”
Israeli suppliers are also feeling the pinch, although the season is yet to kick off in earnest. Steve Hopkins, sales manager for Agrexco UK, tells FPJ: “To be perfectly honest, the recession has had a huge impact on sales of premium-end products such as our stonefruit from Israel. Currently, the market here is flooded, with more and more offers available and slow sales. However, this is not ‘our time’ for peaches and nectarines. We are looking forward to the autumn, when we will come back into our own.”
Conversely, the UK’s burgeoning stonefruit industry is in fine fettle this season, with suppliers of cherries, plums and apricots all seeing strong volumes and elevated demand - a “vintage” season, as one insider says. “Cherries enjoyed a strong year because of good chilling hours during the winter and a dry spring,” says one source.
The plum and gage crops are also sizeable this year, and one insider describes early plums as offering “superb quality”.
UK ‘COTS REVEL IN VINTAGE SEASON
The cold winter has really contributed to this summer’s vintage UK apricot crop, says nurseryman Will Sibley, who works with specialist breeder Pierre Riou’s Cot International breeding programme and AG Thames Ltd to develop the fledging line in the UK.
Apricots need quite a few chilling hours to develop properly, and we had that this year, which helped delay flowering. After flowering, we had good, dry weather and sunshine. There were a few frosts and without those we would have seen a really bumper crop, but nevertheless this year there has been a significant increase in volumes. On top of the weather, trees that were planted two to three years ago are now reaching maturity.
The Tomcot variety was picked on July 16-17 and Flavorcot, which is a larger crop in the UK, was picked at the end of July and lasted on the market for around 10 days. Now we will move on to the later variety Bergecot, which will come on stream in a week and will last for about seven days in terms of supply.
UK apricots have a very intense cropping period and the benefit this year is that the varieties have followed on seamlessly behind the French crop. The French product creates the market and coming in right behind is a great position to be in, as the consumers are already waiting for product. Interestingly enough, the UK is now only about a week to 10 days behind the flowering dates in Nîmes, France, which is the European centre for apricot growing. Around 15 years ago, the UK crop was nearly a month behind production in Nîmes. The dates of production in Nîmes tend to be advancing a lot slower than in the UK. They are starting to flower perhaps just three or four days earlier each year, but we are gaining four or five days each year - because of the curvature of the earth, it appears we are warming up faster in the UK.
There are nine growers in the UK doing work with apricots, whether supplying to retail, selling small volumes directly through farm shops or simply trialling the varieties. The three farms supplying this year’s apricot crop to Sainsbury’s and Waitrose are existing stonefruit, top-fruit and soft-fruit farms, each owned by second-generation fruit growers with more than 100 years of growing experience. They are Clive Baxter in East Kent, Humphrey Hulme at Wingham in Kent, and Ray Manning in Cambridgeshire. A new orchard was planted last winter by Peter Thompson and we are hoping for a full crop from that by 2011.
UK growers have shown greater and greater interest in apricots and at the Novel Crops Day held at East Malling Research (EMR), there were plenty of enquiries. Demand this year has been good - word has got round the grower community that apricots are a very high-value crop with significant volume.
The first apricot crop in the UK was grown by Highland Court Farm in the late 1990s. The trial was very small but it worked. Cot International had identified late flowering self-fertile varieties that showed hardiness in northern European conditions. There was also a desire to extend the shoulders of the French season.
We whittled it down to the three Cot International varieties through lots of trials. Manning’s farm trialled 10 varieties and we discovered which ones worked and brought it down to these three.
UK apricots have really captured people’s imaginations and the support this season from Sainsbury’s and Waitrose has been very strong. Generally, the fruit is viewed as a crop that is not grown in the UK and it has now been hailed as one of the country’s most interesting new crops - DEFRA secretary of state Hilary Benn even made mention of apricots during his recent visit to EMR. This season really is a vintage one for the fruit.
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