For Spain, this means about 2.6-2.7 million tons, in Portugal it is a good 1.4 - 1.5 million tons. To give you a better idea of these huge quantities, there is a calculation example at the end of the Food News. The price for the raw material in both countries, as negotiated at the beginning of the season, is 150 euros per ton.

In Italy, the mood is more subdued. Although the harvest traditionally takes a few days longer than in neighboring countries, this year it got off to a delayed start and has been slow ever since. In the south of the country, this is due to the heavy rains in May, which meant that the planting of the seedlings had to be postponed for one or two weeks. This time is now missing, so that many tomatoes are still unripe and the harvest quantity is currently lower than expected. Due to the lack of raw material, processing factories had to cut back their work to 50-60 percent already at the end of August and tomato growers increased their prices by up to 20 percent. Industrial goods are not (yet) affected by the price increases, as an insider told us in conversation.

The mood in northern Italy is somewhat better - at least among conventional growers. Here the harvest is going well - apart from a three-day interruption due to heavy rainfall at the end of August - and farmers are pleased with their positive harvest (up to 95 percent of forecasts) with high Brix content. Only in the Ferrara region is the harvest 30 percent lower than planned, affecting mainly organic produce. The reason: hail, storm and rain in May had destroyed large quantities of the young tomato plantlets.

A look at Turkey is also not to be missed: The rainy spring followed by extreme heat and drought in the summer are now showing their effects in the form of low yields and high prices. In mid-September, for example, the price of raw materials rose by 35 percent in just two days. Another reason for the rapid increases is the continuing high inflation rate. In August, it had risen to 58.9 percent. On September 21, the Turkish central bank therefore reacted for the fourth time in a row by raising the key interest rate by 5.0 percentage points and it now stands at 30 percent. Even in these tough times, we at Paul M. Müller rely on trusting cooperation with our long-standing producers to reliably supply you with delicious tomato products. Please do not hesitate to contact us.

First, the harvest: The rainy spring and subsequent extremely hot and dry summer are currently leading to lower vegetable yields than usual. However, if the weather plays along - i.e. temperatures remain mild and rainfall moderate - this could give the plants additional time and allow some peppers and hot peppers to ripen even further. This is currently the hope of farmers in Turkey. But no matter how good the weather becomes: There will still be losses. The only question is how high these will actually be at the end of the season in a few weeks. So little produce, equally high prices? Probably yes. Although one might think at first that the Turkish lira, which has fallen in value since May, could mitigate the price increases for importers from the euro zone, this is deceptive: Since domestic canning producers are buying materials and ingredients such as tinplate and vinegar from abroad and have to dig deep into their pockets because of the poor exchange rates in euros and U.S. dollars, prices will still rise. The high level of interest rates is also placing an additional burden on producers and manufacturers in Turkey and making it more difficult to obtain the necessary loans.

This already low supply of raw material is being met with increased demand from the U.S. and Canada, as Peru is unable to meet both countries' demand for bell pepper and hot pepper products this year. This primarily affects roasted red peppers and sliced jalapenos. As a result, prices have been rising for weeks. Especially with regard to peppers, this is fueled by another reason: the demand for bell pepper is higher than usual this year, so that factories are partly switching to the production of these. This is because the raw material prices of peppers for paste or canned are almost identical.

Feel free to contact us with any further questions or if you need a quote.

Since the beginning of September, storms and floods in Greece, Turkey and Libya have been making sad headlines. There have been deaths. Houses, roads as well as fields have been flooded. People lost their homes. Trees have been uprooted. The list of horror news is long, depressing and concerns us all. Farmers have lost not only their homes, farms, machinery and animals, but often the entire yield of their (ripe!) crops. In Greece, the EU therefore held out the prospect of billions in aid money to support, among others, grain growers in the plain of Thessaly whose crops were completely destroyed. After all, in other parts of Greece, peaches and olives had largely already been harvested. And in Turkey, too, hardly any fields with tomatoes, peppers and hot peppers were affected. Nevertheless, there are enough problems here. Read more in the section "Peppers and hot peppers: scarce and expensive?" in this market report.

Local experts estimate that the harvest volume from November onwards will be similarly low as in 2020 (which was also a poor year), so there is currently talk of a raw material price of 10.00-10.50 Thai Baht/kg. This is higher than at the beginning of the year (8.00-8.30 Thai Baht/kg), but still less than in 2020 - when 10.70 Thai Baht/kg had been paid.

In addition, factories are facing challenges because pineapple raw material not only costs a lot, but there is also a shortage in terms of volume: In some places, production of canned pineapple was already cut back to two to three days a week in the summer. Since it is not possible to further reduce production times from a labor law perspective (for example, in accordance with the BSCI standard), local experts suspect that factories will start producing fruit cocktails earlier this year or rely on other products (such as corn).

The crux of the matter is that not only is the supply of pineapple raw material low, so is the demand. As a result, local warehouses are still well stocked with products from last summer's harvest. Thus, if demand remains at a low level in the following weeks leading up to the winter harvest, prices for stocks could still fall to boost sales and create storage space for the new crop. Consequently, it remains exciting on the pineapple front and we are eagerly looking at the winter harvest, the price developments of the raw material and of course the exchange rates. Depending on how the USD develops, this can either mitigate or further strengthen the price increases for the raw material as well as the possible price reductions due to the sale of stocks.

By the way: In our Paul M. Müller-College you will find detailed Pineapple know-how to the different varieties and "ring diameters".

Behind the scenes, however, things are happening: It is true that the rapid increases in raw material prices have come to a standstill for several weeks due to low demand, and the price has even fallen moderately. However, the development is not yet noticeable in case of canned products with Skipjack (real bonito) as well as Yellowfin tuna nevertheless not felt. The main reason for this is the EUR/USD exchange rate. On September 27, it slipped below the USD 1.05 mark for the first time since the beginning of the year. So the euro is losing value or the US dollar is getting stronger. For tuna, as well as all other products that are paid for in US dollars and imported into the euro zone, this leads to major price increases.

This will presumably keep the already low demand for tuna products low. However, whether and how strongly this will affect the prices of canned tuna in the short term depends in turn on the development of the EUR/USD exchange rate. Currently, no one can predict how this cycle will be broken. Therefore, we will continue to report on all developments for you. In the meantime you have Eve-Florence Gölz for all questions on the subject of tuna to the side.