The ripening process is slow, but Italian clementines are in demand.

"Around this time in 2022, we were shipping up to two truckloads of clementines to European countries on a daily basis. This year, we had to wait until almost the end of November for the first full truck to leave the country. The mild Autumn weather has delayed the clementines from starting to ripen. In the Italian clementine growing areas, it is still not cold enough. The speaker is Daniele Martucci of Martucci Srl, a company based in Puglia, Italy, that has been processing and marketing citrus fruit for 45 years.

As a result, the coloration is not yet completely uniform, but the commercial trend seems encouraging. "Foreign customers call us all the time, asking for clementines with good coloring, thinking that the situation in the field can change in 24-36 hours. There are operators who are satisfied with the current level of veraison, such as France and Romania. There are others who are waiting because they prefer fruit with a pronounced orange color, such as Poland, Hungary and Belarus. In any case, there is no reason to complain. What little comes from the fields sells very well. We pay the grower €0.60 to €0.70/kg for clementines that have already been harvested and brought to the warehouse. At the moment, the fruit has reached a color of 75 to 80 percent and a Brix level of about 16 degrees."

Daniele Martucci

While demand is high, there is no shortage of concerns in a season that still seems to be getting off to a slow start. "Until a few weeks ago, we were almost doing the rain dance, hoping for some rain that would allow the crop to continue to grow. Now we have to hope we don't get too much high moisture rain. If it starts raining now, the situation could become alarming because it would endanger the fruit," concludes Martucci.