In the past two weeks, prices for asparagus were at a high level, but with the Mexican supply arriving soon it’s expected price levels will drop somewhat. “Normally Mexico starts in the first week of January, but supply is a bit delayed. They were planning to start harvesting this weekend, but due to the good weather most growers already started this week, so that the first Mexican asparagus might be supplied this week,” says buyer Joost Schoondermark of Nature’s Pride.
A regular season is expected for Mexico, with good availability. “That’s why a price decrease is obvious. Air freight from Los Angeles to Amsterdam is much more favourable than from Lima,” Joost continues. “Combined with the slightly more favourable dollar ratio, this ensures we’ll be able to make good promotions for our customers in coming weeks.”
For Peruvian growers it was a difficult season, according to Joost. “There were many price fluctuations, and the export volume is eight per cent lower than in previous years due to bad weather conditions. As a consequence of El Niño, production fields, particularly in the north, now have a delay. Availability was limited during the summer because of that. It was much larger in the second half of the year, but there wasn’t as much demand then.”
The holidays always guarantee a high asparagus consumption, and this was also true for 2017. “In previous years, air freight from Lima Airport sometimes caused delays, but over the past holidays, supply went fairly smoothly,” Joost says.
In general, he sees European demand for green asparagus increasing. “Globally, green asparagus are a big item, the US is by far the largest sales market. Within Europe, consumption in Scandinavia, the UK and Spain are at a high level, but we’ve noticed consumption in other European countries increasing as well. The Netherlands and Germany are traditionally very focused on white asparagus, but they’re starting to discover the green ones more and more. Purple asparagus is still a very small item for us, we primarily sell these between September and mid-December.”
For more information:
Joost Schoondermark
Nature's Pride
Honderdland 611
2676 LV Maasdijk, the Netherlands
T: +31 174 519 079