Florida growers and exporters will be able to reveal their expectations for grapefruit next season in a month’s time, following a relatively dry spring and significant rainfall in production areas.
This year, some 785,000 cartons of grapefruit were shipped to the UK. The last sendings left the US in April and fruit was available in the UK well into May.
Mike Yetter of the Florida Department of Citrus told freshinfo: “We were obviously disappointed with our total production this year of 21.7 million boxes, down about 18.5 per cent on last season. We did have some external quality issues - primarily wind scarring - but the internal quality was again quite exceptional, with brix over 11 for most of the season.
“Despite some of our shortcomings, we managed to deliver an exceptionally good eating piece of fruit to UK consumers. Exchange rates, again this year, did allow us to price at a good value to the consumer and permit reasonable returns for our shippers.”
Yetter said it was too early to speculate about next season and claimed that he would be able to make predictions next month.
No comments yet