“A bad summer also means a bad market for stone fruit.” This is what of Van Dijk Foods tells FreshPlaza. “The bad weather affects us on two fronts in this respect. On the one hand, the appetite for a peach or nectarine is simply not there. On the other hand, it drives people to sunny places. Some years, people would still seek out the inland coast, but nowadays, you can just as easily be all-inclusive in Turkey with good temperatures. That is an easy choice,” says the trader from the Flemish company.
“Supply is not a problem. Spanish producers will be able to sell a bit more in the south itself, because more people move there and it is a lot warmer than here. Nevertheless, we also still get enough in. That’s not the problem,” Henk continues. “The problem is selling it here, which also keeps prices at a lower level. Not everyone is happy with that, but it is what it is. We can’t make it better. If there are no or not enough potential customers, it becomes a difficult story.”
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In this, he sees little difference between the different stone fruit varieties. “Only the volumes of peaches on the market is exactly a bit less. This is mainly because there has been a year of poor prices on peaches, resulting in less planting. Growers in France and Spain switched to nectarines, and the arrival of paraguayos has meant that peaches themselves also sold less. As a result, you see this season that peach prices are now better than nectarines anyway, and that is a bit of an upside down situation.”
“Actually, we just need to get better weather,” Henk points out as a solution. “There is too much rain now. This is no real summer. I think in June and July we had a total of five dry days at most. One can easily see the consequences for all of the summer fruit. Cherries, melons, plums; there is no appetite. We might be better off marketing winter vegetables now, because these temperatures do not invite a piece of watermelon or a nectarine. I don’t see this changing in the coming weeks either. Last-minute flights from Belgium are fully booked. Everyone is going to try their luck abroad, and who can blame them?”
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