Very pecular strawberry campaign

About 2,500 new hectares of strawberries have been actually planted this year in Morocco, with a surface increase by 30% compared to the previous campaign. According to "Agriculture du Maghreb" of June, final production is expected to be around 100,000 tons.
Cultivations, usually stressed by the difference between the lowest and the highest temperatures in the 24 hours period, were additionally hit in April by some wind storms, which uncovered plantations and scattered fruit. After a particularly hot period, protection films were removed but shortly after it started raining. All these events caused production to decrease against last year campaign.
However, due to a production decrease in Huelva (-20%) the market was favourable to Moroccan produce. Production ups and downs this year were less marked. Even though the industry hadn’t great volumes to manage, it was yet positively positioned thanks to the large demand from export markets, the local market and the agro industry.
With a 63% tonnage, France was the main customer of fresh Moroccan strawberries, followed by Germany (14%), Spain (12%) and England (10%). Regarding frozen produce, France ranks third with 17%, Spain is first with 40% and Belgium second with 21%. About 10% of the EU strawberry market belongs to Morocco, against the 40-50% of Spain being its main competitor. 95% of plants belong to Camarosa variety, the rest is shared between Festival and Candonga, The Ventana variety has been practically abandoned because of its low production in April. It has to be noticed that some producers attribute this year’s low production to the low quality of Camarosa plants imported.