Growth of exports to central Europe and continually healthy business in Germany are more than making up for the lack of Greek citrus sales in the UK, says George Frangistas, managing director of export company Gefra.
Frangistas, who is also president of Athens based Incofruit, the association of Greek Export & Consignment Enterprises for Fruit, Vegetables & Juices, insists: “The UK market is absolutely not important for Greek citrus.
“The normal volumes we export to the UK are around 2,000 tonnes a year, which is really small when you consider that - depending on weather conditions - Greece produces between 250,000t and 340,000t of citrus a year.
“My opinion is that the UK market is closed to us and there are no opportunities - the major service providers are Spanish and clearly they will buy and distribute their own products and not those from competing sources.”
The views of Frangistas are reflected by the on-going situation in the UK marketplace, as noted by Hart & Friedmann import manager Morgan Barrett. The London based wholesaler has in the past imported citrus from Greece but no longer feels the need to do so.
“There has been some really good Greek navel in the market recently,” Barrett points out, “but we haven’t imported any ourselves. The last time we brought in any Greek citrus was this time last year. We haven’t gone into the Greek market this year because we never seem to make any money out of it.
“We’re big in Spain and Morocco, but outside of that we’ve gone for the Egyptian option rather than Greek and that seems the way forward for us.
“There’s no need for the Greeks to send to the UK market when we can get more than enough Spanish in two or three days by truck, more than we need out of Morocco and that’s only a week away by boat - and every Tom, Dick and Harry in Egypt wants to send navels of similar quality to the Greeks but with very low price expectations,” adds Barrett.
“If I was a Greek sender and I had good quality navels I wouldn’t be sending to the UK because I wouldn’t be getting a premium price for my product over Egyptian, Cypriot or anything else.”
Those words more than amplify the thoughts of George Frangistas; but despite the UK market having become extremely marginal to the Greeks they nevertheless have a successful export trade in several key areas.
Frangistas says: “Traditionally about 30 per cent of Greek citrus imports go to the Balkans, another 40 per cent to what was eastern Europe but is now central Europe, and the other 30 per cent to western Europe.
“Our biggest single market is Germany - around 80 per cent of our exports to western Europe go to Germany.
“The Balkans are important geographically, we have the transport advantage, and in central Europe Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland have been very important traditional markets for us.
“Poland used to be a very big market before the fall of the iron curtain, but then we lost a lot of market share to Spain. We are regaining ground now though, so it is an expanding market for us.”
Expanding though the market may be, the range of products in Greece’s citrus sector has been contracting in recent years - alarmingly so in the case of lemons.
“When we talk about citrus in Greece,” says Frangistas, “we are talking about navel and Valencia oranges. The only ray of hope in the citrus business is clementines - there is expansion here, although not under any general structure.
“But a few growers are switching slowly to clementines because they can see opportunities in that product. Lemons are finished though, and grapefruits are gone.
“Lemons used to be very important but now they are wiped out. Exports have been dying out over the last five to seven years and the frost last year killed the vast majority of trees.
“I don’t think that people will bother to replace the trees and in any case, the industry isn’t interested any more in processing lemons.
“Grapefruit never really developed as a product. The local market doesn’t consume it and there was never going to be a real future unless there was a real push to plant trees and develop an export market.
“But why should there be? If that was done it would mean having to compete with Turkey, and that would be a losing proposition.”
If that scenario, painted by one of Greece’s top names in fresh produce, has a feel of despair about it, then Frangistas’ take on the future development of his country’s citrus industry is similarly resigned.
The Gefra boss has long called for a concerted effort to produce a co-ordinated programme of research and development together with a structured approach to promotion and marketing. But his urgings seem to have been in vain.
“There is absolutely no varietal development in Greece,” he says. “This is a permanently discussed and painful subject - every government hears about it, everyone knows about it.
“It has to be a collective effort and it has to start from the Ministry of Agriculture. No effort is being made, although in order not to blame just the authorities I would say that Greeks are not very good team players.
“We don’t really sit down together and have discussions. There is no collective effort and it is very detrimental to the fresh produce industry.
“We do have a few dynamic products in fresh produce, I have to say that, but citrus is not one of them.
“Thompson Seedless grapes are expanding and developing, not just in volumes being grown but in markets too.
“Asparagus is another dynamic product and so is cherries, although with cherries the volumes are still fairly small.”
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