The English Conference pear season is finishing sooner than marketers would have liked, but this has more to do with customer demand for the fruit before Christmas than quality problems in storage.
"The policy of our customers has been to focus on English fruit before Christmas and as a result we sold quite a lot earlier in the season," explained Steve Maxwell of Worldwide Fruit, the largest marketing desk for English top fruit. "But we should still be able to keep going until the end of March."
In previous years, the market has been supplied with English fruit until April or even later into May, but this year marketing desks have gone through supplies more briskly due to market demand and also grade-outs.
"We have not had great grade-outs," admitted Maxwell. "Normally we would expect 65 per cent of fruit to be graded for supermarkets, but sizes have been very small and this time it is about 50 per cent."
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