U.K. mango market "under a lot of pressure" - FreshFruitPortal.com

U.K. mango market "under a lot of pressure"

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U.K. mango market

Avnish Malde of importer Wealmoor says there will likely be a dearth of mangoes until week 19, with the highest prices seen "in a long time".Ā Mango-shutterstock_55827220 npanorama

The Wealmoor director told www.freshfruitportal.com this was because the Peruvian season had come forward considerably because of its warmer temperatures as a result of El NiƱo.

"The fruitĀ has been ripening a lot quicker and the last of the seafreight arrivals have more or less left the country, so youā€™re anticipating a very tight supply period from week 13 through to week 17 before the West African deal starts in earnest," Malde said.

"You will have small amounts of South American supply in between, and the general feeling is the fruit that comes through from West Africa around week 16 and week 17 will invariably help, but weā€™ll be in limited quantities obviously in those early weeks.

"There is certainly a big gap starting to appear and there's a lot of upward pressure on pricing."

He said there wouldn't be any serious volumes from West Africa until weeks 19-20.

"I think youā€™re likely to see prices in excess ofĀ ā‚¬10-12 a boxĀ , which potentially could be the highest weā€™ve seen for some time...the shortageĀ will intimate that there is likely to be a real dearth of fruit."

Malde,Ā whose company has joint ventures with mango growers around the worldĀ and its own production in Gambia, said the West African mango season was looking better in generalĀ this year.

"I think generally weā€™re anticipating a better season from the Ivory Coast than we did last year ā€“ it was a difficult season last year; certainly [that's the case for] theĀ Ivory Coast and Gambia.

"Senegal is probably two or three weeks behind and thatā€™s not going to get started until the middle of June but weā€™re anticipating a decent crop from those countries.

"Then you have some supplies from smaller operators in Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea which supply a bit of fruit but predominantly to the French markets and the European mainland."

Photo: www.shutterstock.com

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