A representative of Capespan North America has warned large volumes of white seedless tables soon arriving into the U.S. could cause substantial price drops if sales cannot be spread out.

President and CEO Mark Greenberg said the market undoubtedly appeared as though it was anticipating significant arrivals of the fruit over the next couple of weeks.

"It seems that the harvest of the Thompson variety is running early and there will probably be a fast peak and abrupt end - from what we gather from our shippers," he told www.freshfruitportal.com.

"There shouldn't be a disaster if the fruit is of holding quality and the market can turn three weeks of arrivals into five weeks of sales. But if it isn't and the fruit must be moved on arrival, then there will probably be a few weeks of bargain prices, as sellers will be competing for purchase orders."

A director of California-based Pandol Bros said table grapes from various Chilean regions were competing against each other and many were being misgraded.

"The situation is currently a very mixed supply of weaker, smaller and many times misgraded grapes from the III [Atacama] and IV [Coquimbo] regions, which are now older and competing against larger, stronger, fresher grapes from southern Aconcagua," special projects director John Pandol said.

"The older fruit will increasingly be rejected and attempts will be made to repack, but old fruit is old fruit.

"We will see a wide range of prices at liquidation time - much wider than reported on USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] price reports."

In contrast to Greenberg and Pandol's concerns, a sales representative of another California-based company Dayka & Hackett - which imports grapes from Chile, Peru, Brazil and Mexico - said he didn't foresee any major price issues over the coming weeks.

"I think it depends on the quality of the type of grapes you have. It's just a seasonal deal where at this time of the year we tend to have more green grapes than we do anything else" Monty Robison said.

"I think what'll probably happen here in the next 10 days is we'll see the peak and then supplies will gradually tail off as we get into the latter part of March - usually that's about the time that it finishes up."

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