Greenhouse cucumbers and tomatoes in Russia: increased demand pushes up prices

A significant increase in demand for greenhouse cucumbers and tomatoes on the eve of the New Year holidays and their limited supply cause rapid rise in prices, analysts of the EastFruit project report. As market players note, the supply of vegetables from local greenhouse complexes today is rather small and unstable. Thus, a number of farms have already completed the sales of tomatoes and cucumbers from the previous cycle. In the rest of the greenhouses, the ripening of cucumbers and tomatoes was greatly slowed down due to the cold snap.

Today greenhouse cucumbers are sold at 120-180 RUB/kg ($1.63-2.44/kg), which is on average 12% more expensive than at the end of the last work week. As for greenhouse tomatoes, their cost has already increased to 75-140 RUB/kg ($1.02-1.90/kg), which is on average 17% more expensive than a week earlier.

So far, traders have not managed to fully compensate for the shortage of local cucumbers and tomatoes with imported ones. The problem is especially acute in the segment of cucumber, the supply of which is rather unstable. Imported cucumbers are now offered in Russia at 95-115 RUB/kg ($1.29-1.56/kg), Iran being the main supplier.

The supply of imported tomatoes is more systematic, and the geography of imports is much wider: they are imported from Turkey, Azerbaijan and Iran. The price for imported tomatoes ranges from 70 to 125 RUB/kg ($0.95-1.69/kg).

Greenhouse cucumbers in Russia are now on average 30% more expensive than in the same period last year. In the segment of greenhouse tomatoes, the situation is the opposite. To date, their prices are on average 28% lower than a year ago. At the same time, market analysts expect an acceleration in the growth rate of prices for greenhouse vegetables in the near future. The reason is that retail chains and wholesale companies start forming stocks before the holidays, and the supply of cucumbers and tomatoes on the market continues to decline.