Argentina: Blueberry export increased nearly 30% compared to 2016

The weekly update of the Argentinian Blueberry Committee has been published. While we spoke about a huge increase in week 39, last week export increased even more. In week 40, the export to the United States almost doubled from 510.210kg to 1.071.448kg. The UK and Canada also increased tremendously as you can see from the graph below. Export to the UK increased from 135.111kg in week 39 to 250.342kg last week. Canada doubled export volumes as well from 31.365kg in week 39 to 65.015kg last week.

There are interesting differences in exports from last year. The graph below shows the accumulated volume of weekly exports up to week 40. Export to the United States and Continental Europe increased, while exports to the UK decreased a little. The major differences are shown in the export numbers to Asia and Canada. Last year, up till week 40 only 9.607kg was exported to Asia compared to 91.189kg this year. Export to Canada increased tremendously as well, from 52.771kg in 2016 up to week 40 compared to 140.835kg this year.

The increase to Asia is very interesting, as the Chinese market isn’t even open for blueberry export from Argentina. Moreover, in a previous article published by ABC about the launch of the campaign it was mentioned that they expect to export 63% of all production to the United States and Canada. This means the increase in Canada was probably expected. However, Asia isn’t specifically mentioned in that article. It was said that the remaining 16% is expected to be distributed between Continental Europe and other destinations.

The total export to all destinations up to week 40 was 3.768.648kg, which is almost 30% more than the 2.924.142kg of last year.