Israeli exporter MTEX believes there is untapped potential for Medjoul dates year round in the UK.
The fruit is starting to enjoy its traditional Christmas high point in the UK, but MTEX UK general manager Marius du Plessis is keen to get UK consumers looking beyond the December peak. “About 60-70 per cent of the overall volume is sold in the run-up to Christmas at the moment, because fresh dates are widely seen as a Christmas treat in this country,” he said. “But throughout our customer base, there is also a strong component of ethnic consumers who purchase dates regularly. Dates are also linked in with other religious festivals, so we believe there is potential for demand to spread more evenly across the year.”
Extremely high temperatures in the principal growing area of the Syrian-African rift from the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea to the Sea of Galilee have been beneficial to product development this season and brought the harvest forward slightly.
MTEX has built its Israeli date export programme from scratch to around 1,500 tonnes in four seasons and volumes continue to grow rapidly. A further 21 per cent year-on-year increase is forecast in 2010-11. Ronen Eisenberg, MTEX’s exotics product manager in Israel, said expansion is being driven by additional crop from new plantations and by strong demand in markets around the world. “The US market will take 30 per cent of our product this season, but supermarkets across Europe are looking to increase the presence of Israeli Medjoul on shelf,” Eisenberg said.
MTEX UK supplies Asda as well as wholesale market customers in the UK.
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