The Portuguese carrot season is shaping up to be a positive one, says Valter Coelho, general manager for Portuguese fresh produce exporter Valfresh: “We’re now starting our new prime carrots season. The quality here in Portugal in general is much better compared to previous years. The winter has been favourable in Portugal for the development of this crop, so it’s expected that it will be a good season in terms of overall quality. Compared to previous seasons expectations are high. For our company, the production has now started and the quality is very good and better than in previous seasons.”
Despite the dry weather in the summer, the current weather is perfectly fine for the harvest of the carrots, Coelho explains. “Our land is mostly sandy and there is no difficulty in the harvest. There has been little rain in Portugal in recent months, so we are not experiencing difficulties at all, actually. We started our first carrot exports this week. Demand has been weak so far, but this week the carrot markets are starting to show interest in starting to load shipments. Mainly the French market is doing well; the south of France and the Rungis Market already have Portuguese carrots at the moment.”
Although the focus of Valfresh is in Europe, the exporter has also increased its presence in Africa and is working on expanding to the Middle East, Coelho states: “Our main markets are France, Holland, Belgium and Germany in Europe. We also have a strong presence in some African markets, such as Senegal. We’ve opened an office in Senegal in 2020 to deal with demands from African markets. We also have a presence with our carrots in Mauritânia, Guiné Bissau and Ghana, and are also starting export to new destinations in the Middle East.”
The total volumes could be slightly lower, which also means that according to Coelho, Egypt could become a strong competitor in a few months. “The biggest challenges for this year will be the difficulty in supplying volumes to the costumers we already have. The quality is very good, but the volumes this year will be lower due to the very dry summer and some lack of water. This affected some of the sowings that we are harvesting now. We also predict strong competition from Egypt, but only from March onwards.”
“In the coming weeks, demand will increase significantly, especially from the French market. It is expected that this season’s carrots will be traded at high prices due to the extreme bad weather that occurred in France and UK, which destroyed many hectares of this product. In my opinion it will be a year, across Europe, of few volumes until May,” Coelho concludes.
For more information:
Valter Coelho
Valfresh
Tel: +351 263 595 009
Email: Valtercoelho@valfresh.pt
www.valfresh.pt