"Spain: "This year we'll harvest twice as many kilos of Verna lemons"

The Primofiori lemon campaign is coming to an end and will soon be followed by the Verna, which this year comes with twice the volume compared to the previous season.

“We expect to make our first Verna sales by late April, because then the quality of the fruit will be optimal," explains Enrique Fuentes. “This year we will harvest almost twice as many kilos of this lemon variety, as last year we lost more than 40% of the production due to bad flowering and finished the campaign early. This campaign we hope to finish by the end of June.”

Despite the adverse weather conditions that Murcia’s citrus growers have faced, with cold waves and unusually high temperatures at other times of the season, combined with abundant rains and even snow during this winter, the quality of Verna lemons is expected to be good. According to Enrique Fuentes, "the greater abundance of fruit in the trees will result in the skin being slightly thinner than usual, and thanks to the abundant rainfall, the calibre will be commercially interesting."

"We have very good prospects for this campaign, although prices will not reach last year's levels. So far in the campaign, we have been defending fair prices for the producers," he points out.

The fact is that, according to the exporter, lemons are a product with slow but steadily growing demand.

"Over the last ten years, the export of Spanish lemons to third countries has increased significantly. Given the growing world demand, prices are less affected when we have a more abundant production. It is also true that the acreage planted with lemons continues to increase every year, although the major producing countries have been suffering the impact of meteorological problems in recent years and this has prevented the world’s actual potential for lemon production to be fully tapped."

At present, the southern hemisphere is starting its exports with very small volumes, while Turkey only has limited quantities to supply its domestic market and neighbouring countries. Meanwhile, the United States, which does have late lemon varieties at this time, has limited sales to its traditional markets, such as Canada, Japan, China or its own domestic market.

"In fact, we have received many orders from overseas over the past few weeks, and it's a shame that, at the moment, our Primofiori lemons don’t meet the necessary quality standards for distant destinations.

The Murcia-based company is betting on the production of new lemon varieties that could make it possible to expand the export window of Spanish lemons while providing a quality guarantee. "In this sense, we expect the first crops to be harvested within two seasons," points out Enrique Fuentes.

"At the moment, the varieties being tested are very promising. They are very productive trees, with great quality fruit and good post-harvest behaviour," he highlights.