Ken Smith of Greencell:
"Lemon shortage not over yet"

Tholen - "It has been a difficult lemon season this year and it even looks like the shortage is not over yet," concludes Ken Smith from Greencell. Greencell is an experienced supplier of fresh fruit and vegetables to the UK market. Greencell has all lines of fresh produce but is specialized in citrus. They provide lemons 52 weeks a year.

"It has been an interesting year. There is a larger demand for lemons worldwide and a shortage of volume. California stated with high prices and less volume. Argentina had problems with very heavy frost and had to end there season at least two weeks early. This created a vacuum, prior to start of Turkish crop," says Ken Smith.

There is a larger demand for lemons from South Africa. "In general the quality of South African lemons is better than the quality of those from Argentina. The problem with the South African lemons was that they had a large volume of small sizes and less volume of good sizes this year", says Ken Smith.

Now the Turkey season has started and Spain is coming up as well. "Turkey is down 40% to last years’ production and Spain 30%. This coupled with the fact the fruit has come onto an empty market, prices remain very high. Russia also has had a tremendous impact as they are buying from Turkey at € 1,15 up to € 1,20 FOT. These prices are unheard compared to previous years. Lemons from Spain are around € 1,05 up to € 1,10 Euro per kilo FOT," says Ken Smith.

At the moment there is a bit more volume coming from Spain. The prices will remain high compared to the norm, because there still is a shortage and less production. "The less volume in Spain is mainly because they had such a bad season last year. In 2006, 170,000 tons were not harvested, orchards were not pruned and this consequently affected production this year. Even though we expect a better availability over the coming months, things will become very difficult again in February as the late Verna variety in Spain is approximately 55% down on last year while Turkey would be finished by then," says Ken Smith.

Overall lemon production Spain for this season is forecasted on 547,000 MT. In the 2006/2007 season the production was 834,000 MT and in 2005/2006 it was 880,000 tons. "We got interesting times coming up," says Ken Smith.

Contact:
Ken Smith
Greencell
St John's House. 37-41 Spital Street, Dartford
Kent, DA1 2DR
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 1322 425555
Fax: +44 1322 425505
www.greencell.com

Publication date: 11/20/2007
Author: Carolien Bierens
Copyright: www.freshplaza.com

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