The British plum season is just beginning, with a vastly reduced crop on offer.
Three consecutive nights of frost right at the end of March in both Kent and the Vale of Evesham struck plum trees at a very vulnerable time.
Nicholas Marston, managing director of marketing desk Berry Gardens, said: “The frost was right in the middle of flowering. In some parts of Kent temperatures fell as low as -5°C. This was then followed by three weeks of cold temperatures and winds. The result is we have the lightest UK plum crop for as long as a lot of people can remember in both Kent and the West Midlands.”
Berry Gardens has just started marketing what Marston admitted are “tiny” amounts of Opal plums and expects to start offering maincrop variety Victoria next week. He said: “But there are very limited quantities and volumes are substantially down on anything we have seen in recent seasons.”
Even the later season variety Marjorie Seedling is affected, and marketable volume of the popular variety will also experience a considerable downturn.
Marston stopped short of quantifying the losses in percentage terms, but another industry source told FPJ he had heard that some growers had only four per cent of their usual volumes. “If you have 50 per cent of your crop this year as a grower, you are doing well,” said the source.
International suppliers are likely to gain from British growers’ misfortune. Marston said: “UK plums now satisfy about a third of the market. Smaller volumes should mean higher prices, but the ability to charge higher prices is limited by the quality of imported product.”
As far as prospects for the season are concerned, he said: “We are hoping to do our best with the limited amount of fruit available.”
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