The Brazilian melon season is now well underway with the first arrivals into the UK in week 37, for UK importer Oxford Fruit, part of the MWW group.
“This year’s Brazilian growing season has been favourable but an abundance of large sizes has made supply into retail customers and their preference for smaller sizes, a bit of a challenge,” according to Svetoslav Udroev, Commercial Manager at Oxford Fruit. “We mainly import Honeydew and Watermelons and occasionally Galia and Cantaloupe melons.”
The start has been made more problematic this year by a persistent shortage of containers, delays and cancellations and ever-changing ETAs.
“The wholesales side has been going well but as mentioned, there is a shortage of smaller sizes on the market. With all the uncertainty around Covid, importers have programmed less, resulting in Brazilian growers planting less, leading to shortages on the spot market and unstable prices.”
Oxford Fruit serves retail customers, the wholesale market, processors and many of the upcoming box schemes, which during lock down have seen phenomenal growth. The MWW group imports on average four containers per week, which are split across its customer base. During promotions with its retail customers, this can increase to as much as 19 or 20 containers per week.
“Demand in the UK has been relatively good this year. Melon sales are predominantly influenced by the weather, the hotter/sunnier it is the higher the demand. Spain finished their supply relatively early this season, at the beginning of September, leading to a gap in supply. The quality seen with the last Spanish arrivals was also not the best, so a large number of our customer requested us to switch over to Brazilian.”
Slav also mentioned, that as they import melons directly from Brazil, Brexit as such has not been a factor to price or availability but it has restricted the flexibility that trading with Europe used to offer. Next day deliveries from the continent are not always possible any longer due to additional export documentation and/or duty paid on imports not originating from Europe itself.
“Other factors pushing up the price with this years’ imports from Brazil is the shortage in pulp (increasing the cost of cardboard boxes by up to 80%) and additional shipping costs (up by 30-40%). We will adapt to these changes but the end result will be higher prices to end consumer and the question is, how much more are people willing to pay?”
MWW grow fruit and vegetables in the UK, Holland and Spain and work with partners around the world.
For more information:
Slav Udroev
Oxford Fruit Company
Tel +44 (0) 1386 831110
Email: [email protected]
www.oxfordfruit.com