The melon industry more than most will have been disappointed to see the British summer cool off at the end of last week. The late summer heatwave – which now appears to be over – drove sales in the category and steady demand has kept volumes moving swiftly through producers’ warehouses.
“The hot weather peak last week caused a huge jolt in orders,” says Scott Davies, commercial director of the UK’s largest melon importer Vidafresh. Direct deliveries are higher than in previous summers for the firm, enabling greater cost savings for its growers and more competitive pricing for its customers, Davies says.
Longer-term growth in the category saw volume sales rise by seven per cent in the year to 22 May, with particularly strong progress made in watermelons. Sales of the popular melon type continue to surge, particularly in baby varieties due to their size and storability. And this is thanks to an improvement in fruit quality – particularly in seedless types, Davies believes. Also integral to the product’s success has been the development of new formats, including drinks, smoothies and fruit salads. In May, watermelon-based drinks were given a PR boost when Beyoncé invested in New York brand Wtrmln Wtr.
Unfortunately, when it comes to breeding new varieties, major developments in the wider melon category have been “few and far between”, according to Davies. Core sales remain fixed in the yellow honeydew, Galia, Canataloupe and watermelon types, with recent varietal development limited to tinkering around the edges rather than breeding new melon types in their own right.
“Designing and developing new varieties [within the existing melon types] seems to offer some excitement and intrigue to the overall range but never enough to really make its mark,” says Davies. “Any new variety really needs to be designed to cater for all growing conditions so that it can be grown 52 weeks of the year and in many countries,” he says. “Seasonal pockets don’t give these new products enough time to ever become really popular.”
To its credit Dutch breeder and seed producer Rijk Zwaan has been breeding varieties of both watermelon and Piel de Sapo that it says are well suited to the northern European market. “We are building a range of varieties that can be grown, shipped and marketed well in the UK,” says the firm’s marketing manager for melons and watermelons, Vincent van Wolferen.
The firm recently developed two new varieties of the long, oval-shaped Piel de Sapo melon under the company’s Melissimo brand. ‘Bravura’ and ‘Dolsura’ are both slightly smaller in size to match retail demand in northern Europe.
But Piel de Sapo still occupies a relatively small part of the UK market, and this can be explained by its unusual appearance, van Wolferen believes. “It is green, it looks a bit unusual, and sometimes people don’t really know whether it’s a pumpkin, a melon or a watermelon,” he says. “This makes consumers more likely to stick to the more traditional Galia and yellow melons.”
Responding to this trend, the seed company is working hard to win over British retailers by convincing them of the type’s best attribute: its flavour. Consumers consistently rank Piel de Sapo first or second against other melon types in Rijk Zwaan’s consumer flavour panels. And in an effort to convince British retailers to stock the so-called ‘Santa Claus’ melon, the company has organised tasting sessions with buying teams at Tesco and Waitrose.
While northern Europeans tend to “buy with their eyes”, according to van Wolferen, taste is increasingly of paramount importance to retailers, says Stephan Schneider of Dutch importer-exporter HillFresh. The company, which supplies large volumes to continental Europe, is looking to break into the UK market soon. In July it teamed up with Brazilian producer Itaueira to add Cepi-branded yellow Honeydews to its rapidly expanding melon programme. Flavour is the variety’s main selling point, Schneider believes.
Customers at some Dutch and German retailers have enjoyed the variety’s taste so much that the supermarkets have decided to stock the variety year-round instead of switching to European supply in the summer months. And Schneider is confident that the brand’s focus on being “The Expert in Taste” will play well with quality-conscious British consumers too.
“The UK has a growing market for high-quality products, so I think there is a big opportunity there,” he says. The yellow Cepi, which is only harvested when ripe and therefore has a higher Brix level and sweeter flavour than other year-round Brazilian varieties, can make a big impact in the UK, he anticipates.
The other benefit of perennial varieties is that they avoid potential gaps in production between the seasons of the northern and southern hemispheres. In late August this year’s Spanish season finished slightly earlier than normal and “the speed at which the main volume from Spain dried up caught a lot of people by surprise,” says Davies.
The vast majority of Vidafresh customers were prepared and shifted volumes from Spain to Brazil ahead of schedule, he says. But others, who had relied on Spain to see them well into September, were left short. Davies is urging customers to play it safe next year. “In many ways, the guarantee of Brazilian volume for customers holds more weight than the cost savings that European fruit can hold,” he says.
Encouragingly, the Brazilian product appears to be “in very good shape for the season ahead”, according to Vidafresh. Productivity levels at most of the importer’s growers are similar to last season and average temperatures in Brazil are 1.5°c higher than at the same time last year
In the UK, importers will be hoping to keep the market stoked as the summer sales boom ends. But the category may need a little more varietal innovation before consumers stray beyond the core lines.
