John Shelford from Naturipe, Peter McPherson from the IBO (Australia) and Cort Brazelton from Fall Creek Farm & Nursery (US), speaking during the workshop 'Blueberries: Trends and Forecasts'.
Peter McPherson, from the IBO and Managing Director of Costa, stressed that market access and food safety issues affect all countries and that the IBO continues to support its members in the industry and thinks that stressing the health benefits is a key to the industry's success.
Peter McPherson from the IBO (Australia) and Costa.
"The thing that has underpinned growth in the industry over the last few years has been the health benefits. The work of the US Highbush blueberry council has been instrumental in this success, having just announced a new $4.5 million funding project to conduct more clinical health research." said Peter.
Cort Brazelton from Fall Creek Farm and Nursery, shared a compilation of figures compiled by the IBO, to illustrate the scale of what this growth has been.
Cort Brazelton from Fall Creek Farm & Nursery.
He said that, along with the growth that the industry has seen, "Building transparency on the supply side with blueberries globally is crucial to success, especially on a fresh scale, in the coming years. An informed market is a more stable and healthier market for those who are most deeply invested in it; growers, domestic handlers and others."
There are three primary markets where blueberries are consumed and that is North America, Europe and Asia/Pacific.
Between 2010 to 2012, blueberry production increased by 124,000 metric tons. The growth from 2005-2010 has been tremendous, recent figures have shown that the bigger parts of the world have slowed a bit since the largest boom, but they are still growing. The world's blueberry production continues to grow by 100,000 tons every two years.
North America, is still the world's largest producer by far. To put this into perspective, Peru's total production was half of the state of Michigan's production. South America's growth has slowed considerably, with Peru being the main country driving growth, Chile is not expected to grow as rapidly as it has in recent years and Argentina has also slowed down quite a bit. On the other side of the globe, Spanish blueberry production continues to see a lot of growth and is now almost equal to production in California.
There has been considerable growth in wild blueberry production which is used for frozen. Although it is often not given as much attention as fresh, when you combine the high bush production and processed, the frozen industry makes up 50% of the business. Growers used to be able to switch from fresh to frozen based on the results of the season, but Cort and John Shelford from Naturipe, who also spoke during the workshop, said that this switch is no longer viable.
"Frozen is a business of scale, not huge returns and some big players have emerged on the processed scene in the past few years." said Cort.
John Shelford from Naturipe.
John Shelford elaborated further during his talk about the frozen market; "The processed market is extremely important and often overlooked. The frozen market sets a floor price for the expectation of the fresh market. Also, growth has been equal to or has exceeded that of fresh. The growth in popularity of smoothies really gave a boost to the industry. However, that market seems to have stabilised, and we are working with the USDA to start offering individual cups of frozen blueberries to stimulate and increase consumption amongst younger generations. The industry needs to remain innovative to reach these groups."
Cort stressed that success in the industry is about knowing your markets. The large polybags that have been popular in the US are not ideal for European consumers who tend to have smaller freezers. He thinks that 500gr bags are more suited for the market.
However, John did leave something to think about for the industry; "It is important to remember that when we encourage consumers to eat more blueberries, we are displacing other fruit, especially citrus in the US."