Spain: Afrucat values peach campaign start with good prices
"The return to normal", as a reference to the harvest dates, next to other circumstances like the cold in the beginning of the year that caused a lack of early products, and the weather conditions with temperatures tending to rise, usually causing a raise in European consumption of stone fruit, causes expectations for a campaign better than the previous one.
The first prediction data for stone fruit pointed to a global raise in Catalonia around 4%. By groups, peach might diminish 3%, plane peach to rise 41%, nectarine might rise 4% and clingstone peach to drop 16%. So Catalonia keeps on specializing in plane peach and nectarine.
This Catalonia production of stone fruit is predicted to be mainly for export this year. In 2011 exports reached 71% of the total for red peach and 73% for nectarine. Talking about destinations, in the previous campaign Russia passed Germany and took the first position as main destination market for the Catalonia peach with 23% and 19%, respectively. These two countries are followed by France, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands. While Germany keeps being the first destination for nectarine with 20%, followed by Russia with 18%, Italy, France, Poland, the Netherlands and Belgium.
Source: Interempresas