The pineapple market was quite stable until the end of May, but over the last ten days the situation has become increasingly rough, according to Mario de Goede of Nico de Jong from Rotterdam. "The prices of the small sizes in particular have dropped to a level around 6-6.50 Euro, the larger sizes are still yielding a price of around 8 Euro.
The importer expects the market to remain weak until the end of July, but that there will be a revival from August, when the supply of the soft fruit reduces. "A reasonable second semester is expected from Costa Rica, but it's impossible to know for sure whether this will happen."
"Last year was a rare bad year, in which there was no money to be made in the pineapple market. Especially when markets like the processing industry or Asia are buying less, people are quick to send large volumes to Europe. This resulted in less planting, and hopefully this will have a long term effects on the market, as the pineapple areas is still too big for a healthy market situation," concludes Mario
