Crop Report

We are maintaining a close watching brief on the weather conditions, not only in the UK, but also across Europe which is experiencing some high temperatures. 

The weather is likely to create some challenges, including on shelf-life, so we are reminding customers to take extra care with kitchen protocols in the heat in order to minimise the impact on the produce.

In some cases, the heat is bringing crops forward, which is good news in the short-term, but could lead to some issues further down the line. We will monitor this over the coming weeks.

While the overall market remains challenging, we are starting to see the first arrivals of new season white cabbage. This will help to ease the challenges we have seen in recent weeks with stored crop not lasting as well as we would hope.

Although we are not expecting any major shortages, we do have concessions in place to help maintain availability.

Red cabbage continues to be a cause for concern as we are still some time away from the new season. 

We are entering a very challenging part of the season, where we expect market availability to be low, following poor yields from the US, while we are also coming to the end of the current season’s Egyptian stock.

We have been working hard with our suppliers and continue to avoid any major issues, despite it being a very difficult market. We are hopeful that the measures and concessions we have put in place will avoid any significant gaps in supply, although we are expecting market-wide shortages throughout July.

We are anticipating the new Egyptian season to be begin in August, which should significantly ease the situation, although there will continue to be some issues on sizing until at least the middle of the month.

This is one of the most challenging parts of the year for blueberries with the gap between the Moroccan and British seasons causing some problems with availability. This is not unusual for the time of year and, to cover this gap, we are bringing in additional fruit from Spain and Portugal. We expect the market to continue to be difficult for the next 
few weeks.

The good weather is bringing the harvest on nicely, albeit with some minor, heat-related issues for example, broccoli stems splitting, although that does not affect the product itself. Cauliflower is now moving onto the main season crop. 

Overall, the crop is progressing well. 
  

We are around a week away from completing the transition from Spain’s Almeria region to Murcia. As we navigate this traditionally difficult part of the season, we have a number of concessions in place to maximise availability.

Cantaloupe and Galia varieties remain the most challenging.

We are maintaining a close watch on the raspberry crop as the high temperatures could have a detrimental impact on availability. This is because very high temperatures can cause fruit production to slow down as the plants react to the heat. 

There have been some further delays to passion fruit coming by sea from Colombia. We are currently expecting the delayed vessel to arrive at the end of this week. In the meantime, we will require a further, short period of air-freighted produce to be imported from Kenya to maintain availability.

We are expecting some market shortages over the next couple of weeks, while we await the main season crop. The warmer weather is likely to help bring the crop on, but we are maintaining some size concessions over the next couple of weeks to help maintain availability.

We are now well into the new season for British carrots and quality and availability is looking very good.

We’re also pleased that Chantenay carrots are now British again, and quality has improved with a more vibrant colour than the Spanish produce that had been affected by heavy rains.

We are expecting a challenging fortnight or so, as we await the northern hemisphere crop. The issues have been caused by an early finish to the South African season due to frosts, exacerbated by planting taking place later than planned in Portugal and Spain.

We are seeing some early season Portuguese produce and we expect the main Spanish crop to be available in around a fortnight’s time, which should allow availability to return to normal.

We are currently using locally-stored British products, which is holding up really well, with good quality and availability.