"Spain: "Good start for first red pepper sales"

Almeria's vegetable campaign has already started, although with small volumes for the time being. The recent drop in temperatures, about 10 degrees Celsius in a week after a brief heatwave, will help prevent imbalances at the start of the production period.

"We are slowly harvesting the early red pepper crops available in Berja, which are sold at good prices, but the market will still have a lot of Dutch peppers until mid-October," explains Francesc Llonch, of the sales department of Gavà Grup.

Although this year the acreage planted with peppers has been expanded by 6%, exceeding 10,000 hectares, Francesc Llonch has good expectations. Since the introduction of the Russian veto on European products, Israel has drastically reduced its peppers shipments to Europe," he points out.

"We have been exporting early cucumbers since last week, although prices are not very good, with an average of about 45 cents per kilo. This week we also started with courgettes. The market is still in transition from some sources to others."

Regarding tomatoes, the last three seasons have been very negative in terms of prices, and this has caused the planted acreage to be reduced by about 30%. Gavà Grup exports tomatoes to different markets of the EU and Eastern European countries.

"Since the loss of the Russian market in the summer of 2014, we have found good business opportunities in Romania. At the moment, we are doing very well in that market, although following the Russian veto on Turkey, there is much more supply of Turkish tomatoes and we have reduced our shipments," concludes the producer and exporter.