Things are currently very difficult in clementines. "The market is flooded by Egyptian product, so we have to work with lower prices," says Stef Minten of Euro Gijbels.
"The citrus market is very distorted by volumes from outside Europe," he continues. "There is little demand from the market and Egyptian mandarins are sold very cheap over here. We are at prices this season that are a bit lower than last year. And that is very difficult to work with. Large volumes are also coming in from Morocco."
Moreover, the trader sees that the small sizes are much less in demand. "And there are quite a few of them. In fact, each variety started a bit later than last year. As a result, due to the much too high temperatures and drought, there is a larger quantity of (too) small sizes this year. Those prices are therefore a lot lower than other years."
He does not expect improvement immediately in the coming weeks. "This will continue for some time and maybe we should start looking at other markets anyway. Other years, volumes were also going to countries like Estonia and Lithuania, for example. However, with the low prices that Turkey, Egypt, etc. are making, there is less demand for those. We can hardly compete with that. For our Spanish (premium) clementines, we might just turn our eyes to markets like Asia or North America in the future, where consumers do want to pay the right price for the best quality."
For more information:
Stef Minten
Euro Gijbels
Acaciastraat 21
2440 Geel, Belgium
info@euro-gijbels.be
www.eurogijbels.be