“No passion fruit from Colombia for ten days now”

Currently, there are large shortages of passion fruit. “We haven’t had supply from Colombia for ten days now. I can’t remember this ever happening before. We’ll only receive a supply by the end of this week. We’ve been telling people ‘no’ the entire week.” Prices are sky-high. “Passion fruit that arrives from Colombia by boat is now sold for more money than African passion fruit that’s been flown in. Prices are enormous. I have seen sales prices of 18 euro for two kilos, but that’s extreme. I expect ‘normal’ prices would be around 14 euro.”

Bad weather in Peru and Colombia

The shortage is caused by natural disasters. “They’ve had very heavy rain in Peru. There wasn’t much supply of exotics because of that. Colombia also had very bad weather. They’ve had landslides and floods. That has played a big part in the supply of passionfruit. We’ll receive very little in the coming weeks as well, perhaps a quarter of what we’d normally receive.”

There are other production countries. “Africa and Zimbabwe are alternatives. These are flown-in passion fruit, so that’s a different price class and quality. Besides, there’s supply from Vietnam, but that’s another larger variety, a different product, really. Those from Vietnam are much larger. They’re incomparable, especially because retail is less flexible when it comes to size changes.”