UK: Wholesale vegetable prices force retailers overseas
Mintec, a market analysis company specialising in commodity prices, said that salad tomatoes cost 45 per cent more than they did last summer, while plum tomatoes have risen by a third.
DEFRA statistics reveal year on year rises in the cost of yet more vegetable lines sold at Britain's largest wholesale markets - Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool and New Spitalfields.
According to the average amount charged in these four markets, cucumbers cost £3.83 per six kilogram box in July 2011. The same box cost £4.31 last month.
DEFRA said that carrots have risen from 37p per kilogram last July to 55p this year, a rise of 49 per cent, while runner beans almost doubled from £1.69 per kilogram to £3.29 last month. Salad onions rose in price by 12 per cent.
The prices are not expected to be passed onto the consumer for the time being. Large retailers are expected to bulk up their vegetable contracts months in advance, ensuring lower prices. Another common practice amongst retailers, which will also make for lower prices at the consumer end of the market, but will be a blow to UK growers, is to purchase the produce at lower prices from abroad.
Restaurants and catering firms are expected to be the first to feel the effects as they tend to get their supplies from the wholesale markets.
Source: telegraph.co.uk
