Belgian group Special Fruit, a worldwide importer of fresh fruits and vegetables, recently released its ‘Exotics Story’, an overview of the many exotic products it will have on offer during the European summer months.

Covering everything from African mangoes to Thai rambutan via Israeli figs and many more, it neatly demonstrates the sheer breadth of product being demanded by European consumers in 2016. Lieve Michielsen, exotics product manager at Special Fruit, offers Eurofruit an overview of the status of some of these key offerings.

On mangoes, for example, the group is seeing highly irregular imports of the fruit from various origins, with weather conditions in different production areas confusing the availability calendar, she explains. This is also the case with other ready-to-eat products including avocados, although the good news is that in both product categories demand continues to increase.

Limes are a particularly popular product with sales that continue to pick up, but the issue the group is facing is that the demand for organic limes is “huge”, according to Michielsen, with available volumes not yet sufficient to meet the needs of the market.

“The pineapple market has been stable up until June, when a surplus in production through the month will have an impact lasting until the end of July, and then we will see volumes from Costa Rica decrease for some time,” says Michielsen. “We know that pineapples shipped by air from the Dominican Republic are very appreciated due to their sweet taste.”

On the more niche products, passion fruit is seen as a well-established product for Special Fruit’s customers with stable sales, while papaya supplies are currently in abundance, although these volumes are set to go down in the next few weeks. “This makes growth in the category difficult, which is a shame because generally there is rising demand, and we have also had to cope with extreme droughts in Brazil,” she notes.

New arrival figs from Turkey are expected in August, and Special Fruit hopes to have a ”beautiful and delicious” season for the category. Sharon Fruit, meanwhile, will be in season until the end of July, and is described by Michielsen as a product that is “being appreciated more and more by the general public”.

The following infographic shows the share of countries that import fresh tropical fruit (Source: OEC).

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