Canary Islands tomatoes are benefiting from phase two of a Foods from Spain promotion in the major multiples. Most of the leading supermarkets have taken up the campaign which features a Tasty Tapas poster in pre-packs with traditional Canary Islands recipes. This phase follows up on a successful pre-Christmas push of mini-recipe pads in punnets.
At least one multiple has reported 150 per cent sales increases this year during the run of the promotions, but the season has not be straight forward for importers.
"We have had more fruit this season than last with volume figures up thanks to better production conditions and also some of the co-operatives having more growers joining them," said Ramón Malo of importer Allfruit. "The season itself has not been particularly good from the point of view of returns though. Before Christmas, the campaign was strong. Then in late December high temperatures brought production on. For a few weeks there were very large quantities and at times the market was oversupplied and fruit quality of some samples was poor."
The tail end of the season is picking up, however. "The last few weeks have seen quantities get back to manageable levels and quality has improved as the weather has got back to normal," said Malo.
Allfruit expects to be in the marketplace until the end of the month and possibly into May depending on availability of UK and Dutch supplies.
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