This year has so far been an extremely successful one for those involved in the UK soft fruit industry, with good performances from strawberries and raspberries and pleasing growth in the blueberry market.

The weather has played a crucial role in shaping results. Ian Waller, sales director at the Summerfruit Company, believes there has been benefit for both growers and consumers in this busy year. 'The very cold weather during flowering created a large amount of malformed fruit in the early Elsanta crop which created a lot of Class II fruit for growers. This obviously had an effect on returns,' he said.

Poor weather across continental Europe throughout the year has created a shortage of imported stone fruit, which is seen as the main competitor in supermarkets during the UK berry season. Waller said: 'Strawberries have been allocated much more shelf space this year, which in turn has led to impressive demand from retailers.' The focus on UK fresh produce by supermarkets has also boosted the season. 'Imported fruit no longer forms a large part of the plans of the multiples who continue to strive for total support for home-grown berries in the UK,' he said. With demand so high though, Waller added that Dutch and US fruit have appeared on the shelves at times.

Retailers have been pushing strawberries in both magazines and TV advertising, which Waller believes can only be good for the industry as a whole. He said: 'The work done by retailers has also been boosted by the excellent work the National Summer Fruits Ltd continues to perform.' Meanwhile, Waller is pleased with the performance of blueberries. He said: ' We have seen impressive growth this year and we also hope to see the start of good volumes of UK blackberries and plums which we are confident will produce a good season.' Growers are continuing to raise their performance with improved cropping techniques and efficiencies. There have been significant increases in labour costs. Waller said: 'This must be taken into account if we are to move forward and sustain the UK soft fruit industry.'

Topics