Salad supplies have been oscillating on the UK market as sources switch over and extremely changeable weather has an impact.
With a snap of cold weather across Europe just before Easter, plant growth in the principal production regions was slowed. Since then temperatures have spiked up to 21°C in the south of France this week - up from 13°C last week - and 27°C in southern Spain.
This week a surge in availability of speciality lettuce from France has seen importers promoting on price to customers to keep volume moving. For example this week, prices for red oak, lollo rosso and lollo biondo cam down to 490p a carton from 690p a carton last week. Frisée prices were down from 890p to 725p this week.
Shelf life of product coming forward is shortened as a result of the change in temperature and humid conditions and this is causing problems with aphids for some growers. As a result, supplies are likely to switch over to northern European sources over the next week as Dutch, Belgian and even UK speciality lettuce starts to come on stream.
Meanwhile, iceberg supplies were running tighter this week with prices for good quality, heavy headed product from south eastern Spain climbing on UK markets as the week progressed. This was in stark contrast to the situation just two weeks ago when the lettuce was available in abundance and commanded just 100p for 10s for supplies to caterers.
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