In 2018, Spain dominated the world export of lettuce, both in terms of volume and value, as revealed by the data from the Statistics Division of the United Nations Organization, COMTRADE, processed by Hortoinfo. The total volume of lettuce exported by all countries in the world in 2018 was 2,304.2 million kilos; of these, 853.19 were shipped by Spain, 330.64 by the United States and 211.86 million kilos by Mexico. Spain (37.03%), the US (14.36%) and Mexico (9.19%) accounted for 60.57 % of the world's total lettuce exports in 2018. The Netherlands ranks fourth with 141.08 million kilos (6.12% of the total), followed by Italy with 130.57 million kilos (5.67%).
Income
Spain is also the country that obtained the most income from the export of lettuce in 2018, with a total of 745.24 million Euro. This is 31.1% of the value of the world's total exports, which stood at 2,396.09 million Euro.
The second biggest country in terms of income was the US, with 432.88 million Euro. The Netherlands ranks third, with 246.54 million Euro, and is followed by Italy, with 211.74 million Euro, and Mexico, with 199.2 million Euro.
Prices
Of the five largest exporters, the one obtaining the best price was the Netherlands, with € 1.748 / kg, double the price obtained by Spain, which received an average of € 0.873 / kg. Spain got the lowest average price out of all countries in the top five.
Destinations
The main customer for Spanish lettuce in 2018 was Germany, where Spain shipped 202.47 million kilos of lettuce. Next in the ranking are France, with 160.22 million kilos; the United Kingdom, with 129.55; the Netherlands, with 71.84, and Italy, with 69.8 million kilos.
US exports went mostly to Canada, with 272.81 million kilos; Taiwan, with 21.02 million kilos, and Mexico, with 15.68 million kilos.
97.96% of Mexican lettuce exports were shipped to its northern neighbor, the US, which received 207.53 million kilos. Mexico also exported 2.15 million kilos of lettuce directly to Canada.
The main customer for Dutch lettuce was Germany, which bought 39.67 million kilos in 2018. The second biggest customer was Italy, with 28.87 million kilos, followed by Belgium, with 16.21 million kilos, the United Kingdom, with 9.39, and France with 7.15 million kilos.
As for Italian exports, they went mostly to Germany, with 42.08 million kilos; Austria, with 14.46; Poland, with 10.24; the Netherlands, with 10.17, and Slovenia, with 7.47 million kilos.
