Late-season arrivals of Chilean grapes in the US may be having a knock-on effect on supplies of Mexican fruit to the UK.
The late arrivals have frustrated producers and marketers in California who were just beginning their campaign, but may be the reason why anticipated difficulty in obtaining product from Mexico for the UK market has not materialised.
One importer said: “We will only have Chilean red until the end of this week, and then next week we will move into supplies from Mexico.
“The conditions of supply have not been overly difficult, so maybe the US situation with Chilean fruit has helped us, and values are still quite high.”
The UK began receiving white fruit from Mexico a week ago, and there is also white seedless grape from Morocco and Israel being marketed alongside it. “The situation for white grapes is fine now, but I think there will be a bit of a crunch on the market in a few weeks when Egypt comes on the scene and Israel and Morocco peak before tailing off,” said one packer.
White grapes have been experiencing an almost unprecedented extended period of difficult supply that goes back some nine months at least.
The position is different on red grapes, and supermarkets have promoted fruit in recent weeks, leading to strong uptake of late-season supplies from Chile.
But US producers in the state of California and importers of grapes from over the border in Mexico have not been so welcoming of extremely late Chilean fruit.
Some reports from the US press indicate that it has cost businesses $10-15 (£5.11-7.67) a carton, as prices have slid downwards.
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