Spain became world's largest watermelon exporter in 2017

In 2017, Spain was the world's largest watermelon exporter in 2017, surpassing Mexico for the first time. This info is based on data from COMTRADE, the Statistics Division of the United Nations.

In 2017, the total volume exported by all countries in the world was 3,370 million kilos. Of these, 738 million were exported by Spain, 669 by Mexico and 222 million kilos by the US. Together, Spain (21.92%) and Mexico (19.87%) exported 41.79% of the total volume.

Italy ranks fourth, with 214.18 million kilos, followed by Vietnam, with 180.71, Greece, with 170.47, Morocco, with 139.17, Guatemala (107.34), the Netherlands (91.75) and Hungary (81.4).

Spain is also the country that generated the highest revenue from the export of watermelons in 2017, accounting for 322.74 million euro out of the 1,273.06 million euro that the world's total exports were worth.

Prices

Of the five largest exporters, the best prices were obtained by the US, with 0.486 euro per kilo. Next in this ranking are Spain, with an average price of 0.437 euro/kilo, Italy, with 0.337, Mexico, with 0.335 and Vietnam, with an average of 0.155 euro per kilo.

Destinations
According to en.hortichina.cn, Spain shipped 302.77 million kilos of watermelons to Germany, 124.65 million to France, 66.53 to the United Kingdom, 47.91 to the Netherlands and 37.93 million kilos to Portugal. Some 99.99 percent of Mexican exports, basically all of them, went to the US market.