Picolas Cage and the festive face-off

Happy new year from the Fruitnet newsroom. The Christmas season is one steeped in fresh produce traditions: clementines in stockings, grapes at midnight, and [checks notes] a pickle tree ornament with Nicolas Cage’s face on it are all familiar features of the festive frivolity. But last month in the UK, major retailers added some unexpected baubles to their holiday ranges. Marks & Spencer customers, for example, were able to buy new-season British asparagus to accompany their turkey for the first time. And in another first, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and M&S all managed to stock UK-grown strawberries during Christmas week.

As Michael Barker reports, the recent festive price war was more ferocious than ever, with many supermarkets selling vegetables for, well, peanuts. This new tradition requires that margins on popular lines – including Brussels sprouts, carrots and spuds – be sacrificed on the altar of customer loyalty, as retailers elbow each other out the way in the Christmas rush. Sell cheap veg, the theory goes, and shoppers will spend well elsewhere in the store and depart bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and Merlot.

The thing is, it does appear to work. The average household spent ￡460 on groceries, pushing UK supermarket sales north of ￡13bn in December for first time, according to Kantar. And Aldi UK posted its best-ever Christmas sales at more than?￡1.6bn. But for growers already spooked by the government’s new budget, Christmas celebrations were muted, even if the British retailers insist they don’t pass on the cost of those loss leaders. And doubts continue over whether “a new deal for farmers” will materialise. Concerns over prices paid to growers remain. And as we saw this week in Spain, buyers are under very public pressure to cover their production costs. Some in the UK worry they won’t even make it to next Christmas.

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Pit stop ?? Westfalia Fruit has topped up its commercial fuel with the acquisition of Belgian manufacturer Syros, which supplies avocado-based products to foodservice, retail and home delivery customers across Europe. Its competitor Mission Produce expects international avocado volumes to remain steady in 2025 compared with last year. But it also says new data shows avocado sales in the US rose by US$546mn to US$3.5bn in 2024, with plenty more room for growth in regions like the midwest and the south. Meanwhile, Morocco is on track to export as many as 90,000 tonnes of the fruit this season, a 50 per cent increase on the previous campaign.

Back in business ?? Fresh produce marketer SanLucar has appointed Steven Martina as its new chief operating officer. Martina departed NZ kiwifruit company Zespri in October after a little over 12 months as the New Zealand kiwifruit company’s Europe and North America director. Prior to that he spent almost two decades at The Greenery.

Espa?a expands ???? Spain’s fresh fruit and vegetable industry is going places. As Maura Maxwell reports, its exports were 6 per cent higher in 2024 at €18bn – a new record – and those shipments totalled 12mn tonnes, up 8 per cent. Part of that success is down to the country’s Fruit and Vegetable Group, a public-private partnership that says it managed to open 16 new markets for around 26 products last year. Those included cherries to Canada, citrus and apples to Chile, and apples, pears and stonefruit to the US. Now it has set its sights on access for cherries and citrus to China and Japan respectively. Citrus was already a big part of Iberian Premium Fruits’ business. But now the company expects its turnover to grow 15 per cent to €200mn this season after it purchased Valencia-based citrus and persimmon grower The Natural Hand. Ultimately, its aim is to become Europe’s largest producer of premium oranges and mandarins. Talking of citrus, industry stalwart Justin Chadwick is to retire in late March after several years as CEO of the South Africa Citrus Growers Association. Here’s an update on who will replace him. And by the way, there’s still time to register for our rescheduled Fruitnet Citrus Congress, which is in Valencia on 25-26 March.

Ties restored ???? South African apple exporters no doubt toasted the authorities in Bangkok this Christmas after Thailand restored access to a market thought to be worth over US$20m per year. And indeed Joe Biden a few days later, as his outgoing administration extended tariff-free trade between Africa and the US – also good news for South Africa’s citrus, grape and stonefruit exporters. In Asia, meanwhile, Indonesia wants permission to export its fresh durian direct to China, reports suggest. And South Korea says it will fight food price inflation by continuing to waive tariffs on a wide range of imported fruits – among them avocados, bananas, durian, grapefruit, mangoes, mangosteen, and pineapples.

Out of their box ?? Faced with a shortage of containers, Peruvian exporters have sent 4,000 pallets of table grapes to the US on the country’s first-ever break-bulk fruit shipment, and were planning to fill two more in the past week. This year promises moderate growth for Peru’s agricultural exports, according to Fresh Fruit Peru. To the south in Chile, the first consignment of new-season grapes from the Copiapó valley left the port of Caldera on Monday, bound for Philadelphia. On a related note, Tom Joyce’s exclusive interview with Grapa Varieties’ Rafi Karniel is an interesting read, especially for those in the grape business. Karniel considers the impact of last year’s Northern Hemisphere heatwaves and delayed shipments out of Peru. And he suggests early-season varieties in places such as Namibia and South Africa will play a vital role in keeping retail shelves stocked.

Cheery outlook ?? These are exciting times for cherry suppliers. Ardgour Valley Orchards has launched a new brand to target customers in Asia, and another New Zealand company Southern Fruits International expects a record volume of its premium fruit out of Central Otago this season. Demand is said to be so strong, more than half that crop was apparently sold even before the company returned from Asia Fruit Logistica in Hong Kong last September. And as Bree Caggiati reports, Air?New?Zealand expects to transport 5,000 tonnes of cargo in December and January, and around 20 per cent of that volume is cherries, much of it to China. Elsewhere this week, a launch event to celebrate the official start of Tasmania’s cherry season brought Australian exporters and Taiwanese buyers to Taipei ahead of Lunar New Year celebrations. And it’s boom time for the cherry industry in Chile. According to Hapag-Lloyd, the country exported more than 22,400 containers of cherries last season – 94 per cent of them to China.

Trading up ?? More and more in the apple business, premium is power. Italian supplier Vip has revealed a further rise in volumes of Ambrosia, Envy, and Cosmic Crisp this season, while CMI Orchards says it wants consumers to trade up from Fuji, Gala and Honeycrisp to premium brands like Juici, Ambrosia Gold and EverCrisp.

Cort short ?? Oscar Verges has left blueberry variety developer Fall Creek Farm & Nursery, prompting Cort Brazelton to step in as acting president and CEO until the group recruits a replacement. At the same time, board member and former Driscoll’s CEO Kevin Murphy has taken on the role of executive chairman. Meanwhile, the USDA has provided the US Highbush Blueberry Council with US$1.5mn – in addition to US$1.3mn received last year – to diversify and expand market opportunities for US blueberries in emerging global markets. Aneberries has revealed that Mexican exports of fresh strawberries, raspberries and blueberries fell by 2.2 per cent in 2024, with a similar decrease expected this year due to poor conditions, higher input costs, labour shortages and a volatile peso-dollar rate. And Europe’s largest cranberry producer says it will expand its output of other types of berry.

Pack to the future ?? Alessandro Turatti says we should expect to see more plant-based, tech-enhanced, and even edible fresh produce packaging this year, as well as more examples where artificial intelligence shapes the business. Read his opinion piece and see if you agree with the key trends he expects to influence the packaging sector in 2025.

Relentless robots ?? Automation in packhouses is far from new, but it’s a trend said to be accelerating in markets where wages are high and labour is scarce. According to MAF Roda’s New Zealand business development manager Chris Bray, that’s especially true in his home country. “Even though packhouses offer wages up to NZ$50 an hour, they still can’t find enough workers,” he says in this exclusive interview. “Automation offers a reliable, 24/7 solution without the health and safety concerns associated with manual labour.”

Stars on show ?? What do raingrown avocados, pumpkin-shaped mandarins, and orchard-friendly drones have in common? They are all among the nominated finalists for this year’s Fruit Logistica Innovation Awards. Check out all of the FLIA and FLIA Technology prize nominees here.

Still ripe and ready…

Missed notifications ?? Feel like you missed a vital piece of news over Christmas? We were worried too, so we put together this quick round-up.

Ginger snap ?? Stop scrolling through endless TikTok videos! Instead treat yourself to this video about Sawari Fresh’s Dutch-grown organic ginger.

Thanks for reading…

Mike Knowles, Fruitnet Europe

PS Produce brands are making a comeback in the UK, and the Fresh Produce Journal is preparing a special edition all about them. We would love to feature your brand too, so if that’s of interest then please click here…