"A similar situation has never occurred before: demand from supermarkets and markets in Italy and abroad is high for both watermelons and mini-watermelons, with interesting quotations," reports Alberto Nocera, president of Agrieuropa, a company located in Terracina (Latina) that has planted around 400 hectares (both open fields and covered crops) for this campaign.
"This is a good moment for watermelons: demand has been abundant over the past couple of weeks, also because produce from the open fields has been lacking all over Italy. We are now starting to harvest the produce, with a 12 day delay compared with previous campaigns."
"The produce is lacking all over Italy as well as in other European countries. Hungary has in fact not yet started to harvest the local produce. We believe things will go back to normal from mid-July onwards."
"Germany is demanding oblong watermelons, while we have started supplying countries such as Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands with mini-watermelons as the produce from Spain is lacking and the country cannot meet demand with that grown in polytunnels. The most popular are 20 kg cardboard boxes holding 4/5/6 fruits. Maybe the increase in consumption is also due to the lack of summer fruit on the markets, e.g. cherries or nectarines."
In the absence of Spain, our competitor countries are Morocco and Tunisia. "This year, we are being affected by the presence on the market of the produce from Morocco and Tunisia so much so that, while we used to supply France as well, this year the French market is sourcing its produce from Morocco, which has been growing increasing quantities of watermelons year after year. Compared with the previous campaigns, our produce shipped to France only represents 20%."
Agrieuropa boasts 4 grading and 2 pricing scales, so it can easily meet all the demand from Italian and foreign distributors.
For further information:
Agrieuropa Soc. Coop. Agr.
S.S. 148 Pontina Km 97,700
04019 Terracina (LT) Italy
+39 0773 756158
+39 0773 756408
commerciale@agrieuropa.it
www.agrieuropa.it