Tropea onions, Sicilian cucumbers and green beans from Calabria were the most expensive products at Caab, Centro agroalimentare di Bologna on 16th February 2018. As regards other products, sales are good but average prices are not very good.
Roberto Bortolotti from Consorzio Agribologna explained that "the month of February has never been particularly good in our sector. Demand is good for Tropea onions, which reach €5 for large grades and €2.50 for small ones, Sicilian cucumbers sell at €2/kg and green beans from Calabria sell at €7-8. As for the rest, prices are rather disappointing."
Potatoes are not doing so bad: produce in crates sells at 45-50 euro cents and the Primura variety (the most popular in the Bologna area) reaches 60 euro cents.
Purple cabbage
There is also a lot of white and purple cabbage. Prices hover around €1.20-1.30/kg. Purple cabbage wasn't available on the Italian market until a few years ago, when it was imported from Portugal. It is now mostly produced in the Marche region.
As regards apples, Massimo Venturoli from Cenerini confirms that prices are 20-30% higher on average. "There are storage problems at times, and that is why we are constantly monitoring batches. Golden is the most sensitive variety."
Venturoli has various clients in northern Europe, who expressly require small graded apples. They do rather well in the north, such as in Sweden, especially considering that they are not very popular in Italy. In this case, we are talking about summer Royal Gala apples.