It is only two more weeks until the Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Holiday, and the import market before the holidays is coming to its end. The prices of many products, like oranges and grapefruits, have gradually reached their peak. The supply of other products, like pineapples and avocados, is now lacking, causing the prices to rise. However, there are also products that still have rather stable prices, like New Zealand kiwis. Apart from a recent overall price change, the holidays have not led to a very unstable price for them.
Popular Australian and South African oranges
As the main summer products on the import market, South American and Australian oranges still looked very good this week. Their price has steadily increased, but is becoming stable. Overall, the price for Australian oranges is between 350-400 yuan. The Sunkist oranges can reach over 400 yuan, but because the price is rather high, and customers have already bought a lot of oranges in the past two weeks, they did not sell that well this week. Around 50 boxes of South African oranges have newly arrived this week, and they are selling smoothly. Their average price is stable at approximately 200 yuan. The popular Cambria breed is priced between 230-350 yuan.
High priced Mexican avocados
Another price increase can be seen in avocados. However, contrary to oranges, even though the price is affected by the upcoming holidays, it mainly increased because of a dramatic decline in supply. Compared to the middle of August, when there was a surplus, the harvest of early Mexican avocados is gradually coming to an end, and only small quantities are sent to China. Even though there are also small quantities of Chilean avocados arriving in China, the total supply still cannot satisfy the increasing market demand. That is why the new Mexican avocados, even though they were priced high at 240-250 yuan, were sold out as soon as they hit the market. On Friday, a box of Chilean avocados was sold for 140-150 yuan, even though they were already quite ripe.
Packaged Zespri, Chilean and Chinese kiwis
Packaged Zespri, Chile and Chinese kiwis
Contrary to previous years, this year's sales of Zespri kiwis has not been affected by the upcoming holidays. The overall sales are rather ordinary, and the price is stable. In previous years, the day before the holidays for the Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Holiday, the price of Zespri golden kiwis soared to 200 yuan, 220 yuan, and even to over 240 yuan. This week it is already the end of September, but, even though the price is still stable between 170-180 yuan, the sales are rather low. Because of a drop in the production of green kiwis, Zespri is controlling the sales of its bestsellers (such as 30#, 33# and 36#). On the market are only green kiwis like 22# and 25#, but buyers are not interested in these, so the sales are very weak. The weakness of the Zespri sales, however, has stimulated the sales of Chilean kiwis. In previous years, their price was generally around 100 yuan. This year, the price has increased up to 170-180 yuan, and they are still selling well.
High quality American cherries
Furthermore, with the upcoming holidays, the American and Canadian cherry season is also coming to an end. Even though this year's supply of American cherries is larger than last year's, the quality is not as expected. This is especially the case for air transported cherries. From the start of the Californian cherry season, there were some quality problems, like soft cherries, and stalks falling off. When large quantities arrived in the middle of the season, the overall quality still was not ideal. Even though the price dropped severely, the sales were still slow. The quality of Iowa cherries, which were transported by sea, is only ordinary, and when large quantities entered China, their quality had also deteriorated, leading to undesirable prices and sales. The quality of Canadian cherries that are transported by sea is better than that of American cherries, but they do not have large differences in prices between the beginning and end of the season. Because the product quality is unstable, there are many price fluctuations. Industry experts believe that the weather in North America will also harm the cherry production. The extreme cold and heavy rain in winter, and the small differences in temperature between day and night will lead to cherries that are not as tasty as last year's.