New Zealand was experiencing the highest ever average price for Enza apples, 29 Euro for 18 kilos and South Africa had a new pear variety, a new blushed pear called Celina.
Grapes were again in the news: The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) introduced the new range of black table grapes with seeds BRS Nubia. The month of August saw record shipments for grapes from California, posting week-ending totals of over 4 million boxes three weeks in a row and India shipped a record 16,000 tons of grapes to Russian this season, 2.3 times more export than the previous season.
The South African citrus was in full swing but not without its problems. With the threat of an European import ban hanging over its head if more than 5 cases of Citrus black spot were found, it was a nervous time, indeed by the end of the month the fifth case was discovered, but it would not be until the end of the season before a ban was imposed. The port of Durban was even more congested than normal, partly due to extra checks being done for CBS, while in Vietnam all imports of South African citrus were stopped after the authorities needed a clearer definition of what was a citrus fruit.
The European softfruit was having a tricky season, a long cold spring which suddenly turned into a hot summer meant the market was flooded for a while. The situation was beginning to improve by the end of the month. Tesco, one of 'the big four' in the UK was in trouble this month, the retailer was fined £300,000 after admitting it misled customers over whether strawberries on sale were genuinely "half price".
A controversial free-trade agreement between the European Union, Colombia and Peru took place in August, as did the approval of a ruling that would allow Egyptian exporters to resume shipments of oranges and tangerines to the United States, this allowed the re-entry of Egyptian citrus, which had previously been prohibited from entering the US for over a decade. Lastly, in August 2013 Pakistan successfully exported mangoes to Japan for commercial purpose after 16 years.