Rain in the Lérida region of north-eastern Spain last week is creating further difficulties for an already tough stonefruit season in Europe.
Mike Harpham of stonefruit supplier Malet Azoulay said: “It is proving a really difficult season. The weather conditions have not been conducive to good quality, as there was a lot of rain earlier on and then hot weather. Spain has been struggling, and Italy too, to a certain degree, on peaches and nectarines.”
And in France, Harpham added, the apricot crop in Languedoc Roussillon never really recovered from a tough start. “It struggled with poor flowering and then rain,” he said. “Now Bergeron from the Rhône Valley is starting, but we have really had to chase fruit.”
The situation has been little easier on cherries, with a relatively short season out of Turkey this year and all eyes on fruit from Washington. But Harpham believes the economic downturn is affecting consumer uptake of what many shoppers see as a near luxury item. “Retailers are trying to keep prices down and consumers are working on a limited budget,” he said. “So I think the cherry job is suffering as people are just sticking to basics - you can see that some retailers have stopped offering the larger punnet sizes as they just weren’t selling. I think there will certainly be a reduction in cherry sales this year.”
Another supplier suggests that it is the UK weather that has let the market down. “We are not really where we would like to be in terms of sales,” said the supplier. “Overall, the market has been quite conservative and I think we could have done with some better weather here.” He added that those importers working peaches and nectarines from France were likely to be faring better than those reliant on Spain. “We are lucky as we take from France, but there have been issues with Spain and now, with the more recent rainfall, they are struggling again,” said the source.
But the plum job has been easier, especially for those importers working with sources outside Europe, such as Israel, which have not suffered the same difficulties with weather.
And white flesh peaches have proved one of the limited successes of the season so far, although some packers have had to look to the US to supplement volumes unavailable from Europe.
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