Spain dominates both the global and European cucumber markets, according to data revealed by a study on the global trade of cucumbers in 2016, carried out by Hortoinfo with data from the Statistics Division of the United Nations (UN), COMTRADE, and of the Statistical Office Euroestat (ICEX-Eurostat).
Although Mexico's global sales, with 693.61 million kilos, are slightly higher than the Spanish ones (+9.49%), Mexican cucumbers do not compete with the Spanish, since 99.27% of them are intended for the US market, while Spain allocates 98.55 of its cucumber exports to the European Union.
Therefore, this study is limited to the large world exporters that do compete with Spain in European markets, i.e. the Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Hungary and Morocco.
Spain
In 2016, Spain exported 633.62 million kilos of cucumbers; 24.2 percent of the world total. Spain's revenue from the sale of cucumbers abroad was 549.82 million Euro, with an average price of 0.868 Euro per kilo.
Spain shipped 246.595 million kilos of cucumbers to Germany, 85.92 to the United Kingdom, 85.7 to the Netherlands, 52.82 to France and 32.54 million kilos to the Polish market.
The Netherlands
The Dutch exported 360.9 million kilos of cucumbers to the world in 2016, which is 13.78 percent of the world total. The value of the Dutch cucumber exports in 2016 was 386.99 million Euro, with an average price of 1.072 Euro per kilo.
197.5 million kilos of Dutch cucumbers had Germany as destination, 84.07 were shipped to the United Kingdom, 19.63 to Belgium, 11.99 to France and 9.88 to Sweden.
Belgium
The volume of cucumbers exported by Belgium in 2016 was 68.98 million kilos. The Belgian exports account for 2.63 percent of the world total, with 65.23 million Euro generated and an average price of 0.946 Euro per kilo.
The breakdown by countries of Belgium's cucumber sales in 2016 is as follows: 31.79 million kilos of fresh cucumbers were exported to the Netherlands, 26.51 to Germany, 8.92 to France, 1.23 to Luxemburg and 0.18 million kilos to Austria.
Turkey
The total volume of cucumbers exported by Turkey in 2016 was 47.81 million kilos; 1.83 percent of the world total. In 2016, Turkey made cucumber shipments worth 25.46 million Euro, with an average price of 0.532 Euro per kilo.
In 2014, the main customer for fresh Turkish cucumbers was Russia, to which Turkey sold 63.27 million kilos; 61.68 percent of its total sales in that year, which reached 102.58 million kilos. The veto imposed by Russia on Turkish cucumber imports, with zero kilos sold in 2016, has meant that total exports of Turkish cucumbers have been reduced to less than half, bringing the total figure in 2016 to 47.81 million kilos. The main buyer of Turkish cucumbers in 2016 has been Georgia, with a volume of 10.14 million kilos, followed by Ukraine, which bought 8.26 million kilos, Belarus, with 5.86, Romania with 5.17 and Bulgaria, which imported a total of 4.3 million kilos of Turkish cucumbers.
Sales in the European Union
Spain has been the biggest cucumber supplier for other EU Member States, with a volume of 624.48 million kilos worth 539.8 million Euro.
The Netherlands ranks second in the ranking, with a volume of 352.83 million kilos worth 370.94 million Euro.
Source: hortoinfo.es
