Raspberry supply from Mexico is coming into a more balanced state. "Two weeks ago, there was a flush of raspberries. With Christmas and New Year's hitting mid-week, it's always very challenging to allocate everything so I think there was pressure on the market to correctly allocate everything," says Gerardo López of Produce Lovers.
However, as of late last week, demand and supply are coming into better balance. "So we are feeling comfortable with the current supply situation and demand. In fact, we may be short on servicing all the demand we have," he says.
Right now, raspberries are coming from three main growing regions in Jalisco, Mexico: Jocotepec, San Isidro and Tala. It's there the company is working with primarily two varieties of raspberries–Amalia and Rafiki. It is also working with trial crops of Malaika and Zawadi raspberries and it's waiting for harvests and assessments to determine how to proceed with these latter two varieties.
© Produce Lovers
The state of other berries
With demand in better balance with supply, this comes at a time when other berries, such as strawberries, have seen a challenging year. "It's been difficult in terms of pricing stability on strawberries–we had rain in Mexico and at one point, fruit was extremely expensive. Then it went down really quickly and now it's going up. It's been a rollercoaster on strawberries," says López.
Meanwhile pricing on raspberries is looking different compared to last season when raspberries were pricing well above $20. "This year prices have not gone up as they did last season and that's been affecting the returns for growers," notes López. "Now I am seeing prices strengthening, but it's also because we've been getting cloudy skies in the growing region, lower temperatures and some rain. That affects production and when there's a shortage, prices may go up for a few weeks and then stabilize again."
For more information:
Gerardo López
Produce Lovers
Tel: +1 (305) 407 3891
[email protected]
https://www.producelovers.com/
