Fruit in British market in early October 2008

Apple:  French Golden Delicious, Red Delicious and Granny Smith are now more freely available within a fairly stable market. Quality is good and fruit is firm with a good eating quality.

 

Pear:  The whole pear market is under pressure due to the European shortfall in Conference pears. This is pushing demand up in other pear varieties due to the extremely high prices for Conference. Pears in general will increase in value as the season progresses.

 

Melon:  The Brazilian Honeydew and Galia are trading freely, but there is a shortage of smaller sizes. Cantaloupe is coming through – albeit with some quality issues and Brazilian water melons are short on the small sizes in a tight market.

 

Orange: All Southern Hemisphere oranges (mostly South African) will see the market tighten this month as nearly all imports are already in this country to beat the duty increases on 2nd week in October. Currently medium are freely available with small and large both experiencing some shortages. No surplus is available on juicing oranges. Prices are fairly stable, availability is not good and will remain like this through October and November.

 

Lemon:  Southern Hemisphere lemon is all but over with early Turkish arrivals now being seen with Spanish commencing towards the back end of October.

 

Stone Fruit:  European stone fruit is more or less over, peach and nectarine are coming through very large and the quality is being looked at daily and we believe this only has a week or so left until we withdraw it. Early Southern Hemisphere peach & nectarine is usually woody and tasteless and we normally take a break for around 4 weeks.