The Eurostat data for February shows that the continual rise in EU-28 consumption is on hiatus. After a good January 2018 (+ 1.5 %), February brought a downturn of 3.4 %. However, we should not over-interpret this very slight under-performance. Consumption in February once again exceeded the 500 000-t threshold, which had never happened before 2016 at this time of year, and over twelve months (March 2017 to February 2018), we are still 200 000 t up on the previous twelve months. Over twelve months, total consumption was 6.36 million tonnes. Apart from European production, which leapt up by 5.7 % (especially the Canaries and Martinique) between 2017 and 2018 (first two months), the dollar origins (- 1.2 %) such as the African ACPs (- 1.3 %) or other ACPs (- 0.8 %) were down. Over the first two months, it was Colombia (- 20 %) and Costa Rica (- 6 %) which were holding back the dollar group. Ecuador (+ 12 %) and Panama (+ 62 %) were a long way up, though without managing to overcome the shortfall. Cameroon (- 11 %), the Dominican Republic (- 3 %) and also Belize (- 23 %) dragged the ACP group into the red, while Côte d’Ivoire increased its supply to the EU by 7 %. The countless logistical problems and alerts for certain transnationals in late January 2018 on the depressive effects on the supply of the climate vagaries, explain this trough, which would only be very fleeting.
For its part, the US market maintained a growth rate of 1 to 2 %, reaching 4.25 million tonnes over the last twelve months (March 2017 to February 2018). It did not have a brilliant February in terms of volumes (+ 0.1 %), yet an excellent January meant a very good start to 2018 on a footing of + 2.1 %. While the conventional banana supply was down by 0.6 % over the first 2 months, it was more than offset by organic banana imports, which leapt up by 25 % (with Ecuador well in the lead). As for the EU, Ecuador proved a hit with a 39 % increase, after a dreadful start to 2017. Guatemala, Costa Rica and Honduras all saw drops.
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