Pineapple monthly review: December 2019

In December, the pineapple market situation was rather decent, given the circumstances.  During the first half-month, the social movements in France and the Netherlands raised fears of the worst, especially since demand was late in attendance up to a few days before Christmas. Against all expectations, supermarket sales were steady, to such a point that some operators sometimes had fruit shortages. While it is true that the overall supply was not very big, it was mainly the supermarket chains which facilitated volume absorption. As was already the case in November, there were spot sales on the East European markets, for fairly limited volumes, and they did not have any “booster” effect on prices outside of these markets.

The air-freight market was split between those operators with access to the supermarket sector circuits, and the rest. While demand was still irregular, the supply was big from the beginning of the month, with the return of Cayenne from Cameroon, as well as Ghanaian and Ivorian fruit. Fortunately, the heaviest laden operators managed to implement promotions, which helped ease the pressure. For the others, sales were more difficult since demand was really late in getting going for the specialist retailers. The sluggishness of demand on the wholesale markets also complicated Sugarloaf and Sweet sales, usually more fluid. We should note the fright caused by the positive results from ethephon analyses on certain batches from Ghana. At the end of the month, demand was stronger, in particular for the scarce coloured Sugarloaf batches, which were therefore well valued.

The Victoria supply saw a big rise in December. However, operators did not struggle to sell off the fruit, since demand was fairly high. We should note that the scarcer sizes 6 and 7 were better valued. After Christmas, demand was a bit lower, while the Reunion supply experienced some quality concerns.

pineapple - france - import prices in decembre 2019