“Limes are a real hype at the moment. Difficult to say what makes them this popular, but prices are absurdly high. Normally when Mexico and Brazil are on the market together, there is too much supply and prices go down. At the moment, Mexico isn't exporting big volumes to Europe, but to the United States. Brazil seems to export the same volumes to Europe as last year, about 70-80 containers a week. Still prices are extremely high, prices are up to 15/16 Euros per box. It's already been like this for a few weeks and we expect that it will remain the same for the coming weeks,” states Tamar de Graaff from Boca Doce Trading.
Tamar de Graaff is the owner of Boca Doce Trading, which is an intermediary for growers from Brazil and importers in Europe. She is Israeli but lived in Brazil for many yearsl. She moved to the Netherlands 8 years ago. After working for a Dutch fresh produce company, she decided to start her own business. “It's a Dutch company, but I work with importers from all over Europe. My job is to find good producers in Brazil to import from to send to the European market. Brazil is a huge country and to import from them you have to deal with a time difference, language barriers, and culture differences, which make it all the more difficult. I make the contacts and assist in all daily processes like prices, quality, and logistics”, explains Tamar.
Boca Doce Trading mainly focuses on mangos and limes from Brazil. According to Tamar, these products are very interesting with variable markets. “From June till September there are fewer volumes in limes from Brazil because it's wintertime for them. This is unfortunate since this is the season in Europe where limes are consumed the most, in cocktails for example. This is when prices will increase tremendously since there are less volumes and some quality issues. After September, the season continues and the bigger volumes are exported from November till March, however, the consumption level in Europe is lower at this point. Prices are normal between 4 to 6 Euro. Compared to the 16 Euro of these weeks, it illustrates the craziness of the market right now. We even make use of airfreight a lot, as the volumes per boat are insufficient. However, the market is going to turn around again at some point and we have to be careful when this might be. If we aren't, people can lose a lot of money.”
Also, the weather is a big factor influencing the export and production of Brazil. Tamar explains that it's different for each product. “I work with lime producers from South-east Brazil, nearby Sao Paulo. The problem is the irregularity of the rain. We have periods of too much rain and periods without any rain. This effects a great deal of the lime production, for example, the limes can show all kinds of skin damage, have less juice due to the lack of water, fall earlier from the tree before ripe, prior to harvest. These are all examples of how the irregularity of the rains make the lime production difficult.”
Continuing with the mangos, which suffer even more from the weather according to Tamar. “It's a huge problem for the mangos that come from the area of Petrolina. We need rain in the region of Minas Gerais to fill in the river that supplies water to the mango production at the North East of Brazil. Last year, long periods of no rain in Brazil resulted in a scarcity of water, the national reservoir of water had decreased to 2%!! It needs to rain in the middle of the country because the water is collected from the river into the reservoir. Luckily in January, we had lots of rain and all producers received a weekly update on the status of the reservoir.
“There are many different varieties of mangos in Brazil, we work with Tommy Atkins which is available all year round,” adds Tamar. “This variety is very popular in several countries due to the beautiful external red colour, however at the moment the quality isn’t sufficient and the costs are quite high. This results in very low export volumes of mango these last 2 months. We hope to increase the volumes again in June. It’s a good period for the Brazilian mangos since Africa doesn’t have this variety and Israel hasn’t started yet. Besides, the Brazilian mangos have a very nice colour. The fibreless varieties like Kent, Keitt and Palmer are also very popular and very desirable. Consumers are asking every day more and more for these varieties because of their taste and texture. These varieties are not available all year round. Kent for example can only be harvested between October and December, but growers are working on getting Keitt and Palmer during more periods of the year”.
Tamar concludes: “It seems that water issues are better this year. However, we still have other factors influencing our daily operations. For example the political situation can affect the stability of the currency. All our costs are in real and the export is arranged in Euro. I believe when the political situation has calmed down the currency will be more stable and exporters will be able to plan their sales better according to their local costs.”
