Brazil: “Increasing our export volumes of lemons year by year”

“After shipping lemons, we are now running our export season of oranges. It’s the period of loading the Navel variety, and, as happened with the lemons, this season the biggest demand comes from Europe. We started the lemon shipments in early February and ended at the beginning of May. Most of the Cutrale shipments of lemons went to Spain, UK, Italy and Canada”, says Carlos Jose Amorim, export manager of Sucocitrico Cutrale, Brazil.

He explains that the company is increasing the export volumes of lemons year by year. “A few years ago, Cutrale has expanded its cultivation area of lemons looking for a bigger share of both domestic and international markets.”

In a normal year, the Brazilian lemon campaign begins when there is still European lemons available in the market, or even imported lemons from other origins. “This doesn´t stop Europe from being the biggest importer of Cutrale's lemons during the export season. In fact, we have concentrated the absolute majority of our orange and lemon seasonal shipments to European importers for many years. Therefore, we’ve built a strong range of regular customers who seek our citrus throughout the whole season.”

Amorim concludes that during the last two campaigns the company noticed a significant growth for lemons destined for the processing industry. “This fruit, packaged in wooden pallet bins of 1,180 kg, represents almost 50% of our total export volume for this year.”