"This strawberry campaign had a marked trend change"

The strawberry season is almost over. After months of hard work to supply consumers with the best strawberries, now it's time to analyse the results. According to Grufesa manager, Carlos Cumbreras, the quality of the strawberries has remained stable throughout the 2014/2015 campaign.

This has been, as stated by the manager of the cooperative, a campaign "in which strawberries have stood out for their quality, better than in previous campaigns." Over the course of the season, Cumbreras has highlighted a "marked trend change," which normally takes place around the Easter period and which coincided with high temperatures this season, "which were not favourable for us."

For Cumbreras, the strawberry campaign can be divided into two distinct stages, with Easter as the dividing line. The first of them was "very positive, with smooth demand and acceptable prices at origin, while in the second, demand dropped and there was oversupply which consequently pushed prices down."

Regarding the volumes harvested, Cumbreras said that this has not been a "particularly long campaign, but the volumes of fruit marketed have been greater at the end of the season, remaining stable until near the end of the May." Currently Grufesa is still harvesting small amounts for the fresh market and for industrial processing, so there is still no definite data on production volumes.

This increased production has been accompanied by good consumer demand, even though it has dropped in the final stages. "We lacked produce during much of the campaign, and later on there has not been enough demand for everything we could have harvested," he stresses.