The stone fruit campaign is underway in Extremadura, where the crop quality is reported to be good compared to other years. Plums, which are the most representative fruit in terms of volume in this growing area, have been showing a good commercial behavior since the beginning, while peach and nectarine volumes have dropped, and their productions have clashed earlier than usual with the fruit from Catalonia and Aragon.
"We are dealing with a harvest of extraordinary quality this year in Extremadura in terms of flavor, Brix levels, color, sizes and pulp firmness, except for some batches of early fruit affected by excessive rainfall," said Emiliano Andrade, partner of the Extremadura-based companies Landfruit and Lema.
"The harvest continues at a faster pace than usual, both for us and for producers in Catalonia and Aragon, so the volumes available could drop earlier than usual this year, also taking into account that there is a lower fruit supply from Italy due to the impact of heavy rainfall," he says.
According to Emiliano, the plum harvest is moving forward at a faster rate for all varieties. Part of the plum season could be quite interesting due to the high demand and a possible gap in the supply between the July-August varieties and the Larry Ann and Angeleno, with a possible drop in the harvest volumes of the latter, but with a better quality.
Under these circumstances, plum prices, which have remained stable since the beginning of the season, could start rising from now on, ahead of the second part of the season. In general, the plum production has so far dropped a little below last year's, but with a remarkably superior quality. Also, the start of the campaign coincided with a gap in the supply due to the early end of the Chilean plum season, which gave prices a boost from the beginning. In other years, Chilean fruit had even overlapped with the Spanish."
"For the past two to three weeks, the first container shipments arriving to overseas destinations have been highly rated in terms of fruit quality on arrival, especially in Brazil. Mexico and Canada are also starting, and they are very eager to receive Spanish fruit, since they have had no plums on the shelves for a month. The high quality of Extremadura's fruit is allowing it to reach these more distant destinations without problems, despite the longer transit times we have had to deal with on the maritime routes since the pandemic," says Emiliano Andrade.
For more information:
Emiliano Andrade RodrÃguez
LandFruit
T: +34 924 800 600
emi.andrade@landfruit.es
www.landfruit.es