Crop Report

The heat is causing problems for prepped veg, with several products affected. Carrots are suffering from dehydration and, while we are taking steps to address this, customers can soak any affected product in water to help restore them.

With cauliflower, there has been some progressive bruising, which is challenging because it can only be seen over time, often after it has left the depot.

Cabbage is currently greener than normal, but this is not unusual for early season produce.

As we approach the end of a very difficult season, we are seeing an increase in quality issues. While we are undertaking additional grading, concessions are now essential to help maintain availability. These include a concession for darkened dry ends on South African stock.

We continue to work hard with our suppliers to maximise availability, but it is a very challenging period. We do not expect to see the situation ease significantly until the new Egyptian season in August

Even then, we are anticipating some issues on sizing to continue until at least the middle of the month.

The hot weather has led to early flowering in the crop, and while we are trying to grade this out, it is affecting a large proportion of the harvest. We therefore have a concession in place to maintain availability.

This has not been helped by environmental agencies stopping the pumping of water from certain rivers, which is likely to lead to further problems in the next few weeks.

We are importing additional volumes to supplement British supply and maximise the amount of product available, but it is currently a very challenging market.

Blueberries are now all coming from British farms, which should ease the supply pressures that have been experienced recently.

The heat is causing some problems for the crop, with pheasant eye (a discolouration of the buds caused by uneven development) and hollow stems, neither of which should affect the eating quality of the product. 

We are well into the Murcia season, with larger volumes arriving and most of the recent supply challenges have now been overcome. The only remaining concessions are for size on Cantaloupe and Galia varieties, but normal supply is expected from the end of this week.

As we have been reporting, the recent temperatures have been causing some issues for raspberry crops. Excessive heat has caused growth to slow and affected the firmness of the berries, which are softer than usual.

Colombian sea-freighted produce will be arriving tomorrow. There will be a short period while stocks of air-freighted produce from Kenya are used up, but this should only be a few days, after which we expect to be using sea-freighted produce through to the end of the year.

We are expecting availability to start to improve next week as we begin to receive new season Spanish produce. Until then it will continue to be difficult, while we use the last of the South African stock, where the season was curtailed due to frosts.

The hot weather has been good news for British growers, advancing the harvest of fine beans by around a fortnight. These will therefore be available earlier than expected.

We are seeing some quality issues with shallots, which are currently coming from store. However, this should improve as we are moving away from stored product this week. 

There are some heat-related problems with spring greens, which is resulting in smaller produce that has some hearting at the core.