Across the board, the 2021 tomato year in the European Union has started just below average. This is mainly due to lower prices in Italy in January. The Netherlands and Spain are slightly above average up to and including week 4, the figures show.
A similar sound from Dutch trade: January was 'on balance average' with a slightly difficult start and a better end.
At the moment there is a lot of supply from Spain, and to a lesser extent Morocco. After the cold peak, product is now coming in large quantities from the plants in the south.
Ample southern supply
More difficult pricing is therefore expected for the coming week. And the cold, expected in the Netherlands for the near future? It will 'certainly cause movement', but the question is whether it will also do the price good, whereby of course the market situation between retail and wholesale will also differ.
Last week, supplies from Spain and Morocco were also plentiful on German wholesale markets. In vine tomatoes, Belgian and Dutch product was best paid out of all supplying countries, with a price increase compared to week 4. The price for Moroccan and Spanish product was stable here.
Loose tomatoes dropped slightly in price for shipments from Morocco and Spain. The prices here were also lower than for vine tomatoes. The supply from Belgium was paid the best.
January 2021
Back to the numbers with a look at the European tomato dashboard. In the figure above, the blue line is Spain and that line has been going down since week 2 and that trend continued last week. It is the result of a wide supply.
Overall, as mentioned, 2021 has started slightly below average. Both the five-year average and the average price for 2020 are, at an average of 1.09 Euro per kilo, 7 cents higher than the average price for 2021.
This below average price is mainly due to lower prices in Italy. For January there is a gap of more than 20 cents between the price of 2021 and 2020 and the five-year average.
January 2021 got off to a better start in Spain and the Netherlands. The average price in Spain is 3 euro cents above the average kilo price of the five-year average and 6 euro cents above that of 2020. This was mainly caused by a large cold weather price peak around week 2. After that, the price started to fall and if the five-year average is followed, the decline will continue towards February.
In the Netherlands, the average price for 2021 in January is also slightly higher than the five-year average. Here the difference is 4 euro cents, worth 1.35 Euro per kilo average in the first weeks of January.