From week 43 to 45, the kaki variety Bright Red, the most common nowadays, has seen its price at origin go from 0.70 Euro per kilo to 0.44 Euro per kilo, according to data supplied by the Agro-food Price Observatory of Valencia, Spain's largest kaki producer. Nevertheless, according to the president of the Spanish Kaki Association, Vicente Masià, "demand is starting to recover."
Among other reasons, prices are influenced by the abundance of small sizes due to the effect of drought during the fruit's formation, as well as to the higher volumes of second class fruit due to the impact of hailstorms in summer and at the start of the campaign.
"Russia is a market where small calibre kakis can be easily sold, but with the ban on exports to this country, traditional markets have had to absorb small fruit and prices have suffered," says Vicente Masià. In any case, it should be noted that Russian demand was only noteworthy from the month of January," he adds.
Masià affirms that "at this time of the season, the fruit increasingly meets the right conditions to be stored in chambers, so marketers can delay the sale of their produce and be under less pressure during the rest of the campaign, taking advantage of the fact that demand is expected to increase as temperatures drop."
In the same way, kakis at this time are already suitable to be shipped to distant markets, where this year, due to the Russian veto, "we expect container shipments to increase to non-EU countries such as the United States, Canada or Brazil, as well as Asian and Middle Eastern markets," he states.