Pineapple monthly review: September 2021

In September, two factors contributed to the gradual improvement in the situation on the pineapple market. Firstly, the supermarket sector refocused on the fruit, while the overall Sweet supply was less substantial than initially predicted. The combination of these two factors was able to relieve the pressure on the market in a tough context for spot sales. Throughout the month, the Costa Rican supply was fairly imbalanced, with too much small-sized fruit at the beginning of the month, and too much size 6 and 7 fruit at the end of the month. The fact that the Costa Rican juice industry was on the lookout for fruit, and prepared to pay good prices, temporarily helped relive the pressure on the spot market. Nonetheless, we did not see any recovery in rates, since overall demand on the spot market remained flat throughout the month.

Conversely, the air-freight market was highly indifferent, because of a lack of interest in the fruit. Despite heavily reduced imports, the operators did not manage to turn this trend around. The resumption of operations in schools did nothing to improve demand, and the operators had to manage their imports as best they could throughout the month, to prevent stocks from forming. Although the Cayenne supply was heavily scaled back, sales only involved a few batches. On the Sugarloaf market, the situation was hardly any better. What sales of green fruit did occur were made by the supermarket sector. On the wholesale markets, demand for this sort of fruit was non-existent. Coloured fruit, on the other hand, sold a bit better on the wholesale markets. However at the end of the month all the varieties seemed to be stuck in the same boat, with several sales made under PSPs. Sweet sales were more or less fluid, according to the brands and origins on the market. The few batches from Ghana struggled to find any takers, because of the lack of coloration of this fruit compared to those supplied by the Latin American competitors.

Interest in Victoria took time to make itself felt in September. It was only from the third week, when the overall supply had been heavily scaled back, that demand was more regular.

pineapple - france - import prices september 2021