Oversupply of cauliflowers is bringing price levels crashing down on wholesale markets this week. One trader reported prices as low as 10p a head on the market in Sheffield this week for product from Cornwall. "The quality has not been up to scratch and there is too much water in the product," he told freshinfo. And loadings of late-season Lincolnshire cauliflower to Bristol were so heavy at the end of last week that product had still not cleared four trading days later.
Sheffield traders were hoping for a better market as prices lifted to 40p a head, but that is likely to be short-lived. "I am getting reports that certain areas of Cornwall are flushing again with growers cutting in excess of 1,500 trays a day," said Nigel Clare of Marshalls of Butterwick. "For Cornwall this is very high as 700 trays represents an acre of harvested. So I would think someone is placing a lot of product onto the wholesale market that might be large and ricey in quality."
According to Marshalls, which is one of the leading brassica growers in the UK, the Cornish crop has been of exceptionally good quality and continuity but Clare warned that supplies of the variety that most growers use are just coming to the end of their availability.
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