Crop Report

There are some significant shipping delays from South and Central America, with vessel arrivals expected to be delayed by around two weeks. This is causing market-wide challenges to the availability of limes.

We have put some concessions in place to allow for a broader size specification over the next few weeks, to try to maintain availability while we await the arrival of the fruit. However, the next two weeks will be difficult, with the potential for some shortages.

Lime juice is also affected by the delays and is likely to see some availability issues until the arrival of the new fruit.

Growers across Europe are reporting some issues with compost, which is causing mushrooms to open more quickly than they normally would. This is creating some problems for large mushrooms, which are struggling to reach the normal 100mm+ size. While the situation has improved in the past few days, we have introduced a temporary size concession to help maintain availability.  

There are currently no major availability issues with potatoes and, depending on market conditions, we do not expect any significant problems for at least a few months. 

We are monitoring the crop carefully, particularly for salad potatoes, due to the lack of carryover stock creating shortages, and large bakers, due to the limited growing time. We will continue to work on contingency plans, which may be required later in the season.

We have been working with suppliers to try to address some quality issues with prepped potatoes. Our technical team has been working closely with the supplier and put additional processes and checks in place, which should address the problem.  We have also introduced a second prepped potato supplier to help mitigate any future issues.

While we are still monitoring the crop closely, we are very pleased to see an improvement in the quality of the Kenyan crop. This has been accompanied by the first arrivals from Egypt, meaning that availability is much improved and, as long as there are no further issues with the early season crop, we should avoid any further problems.

In addition to the poor South American harvest, which is affecting product availability, there are now some additional problems being caused by delays to shipping. This will remain the case until the new year.

However, once January is here and we start to see the arrival of fruit from South African, we should see the situation ease.

There have been some delays with the transportation of blackberries from South Africa. This has been causing some quality issues, so we have taken the decision to broaden our supply origins and source additional fruit from Morocco.

We are not expecting any availability issues and anticipate that this should address any quality concerns.