Colina Fruits supplies blueberries for 12 months of the year and works with all of the major producing countries. "Huelva, Spain, is the strength of our supply, but this year it has been tricky," comments Will Hill, Director at Colina Fruits. "There have been none of the usual peaks in production which the retailers rely on for promotions. Morocco has been threatening bigger volumes, but we have not seen any more coming to the UK, however, quality is good."
Spain and Portugal have been extremely wet. Will's colleague over there said it is the wettest start of a year in 150 years.
"There is now an interesting dynamic, pre-season no one was willing to commit as to volumes, we are selling now and moving into Eastern European supply. Poland had very cold weather around ten days ago, there is a similar situation in Romania. It is now our job to go and source blueberries from other sources such as Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia and even Ukraine to guarantee our customers a strong offering."
Will said they are very cautious with new suppliers. "We try to work with growers who fit in with the Colina Fruits values, at the same time, they build up relationships with new growers over the years."
Damian and Carlos from Colinda Fruit visited Polish partners and started the progression with Ukrainian fruit.
"We work together with growers to establish these relationships; we have been to both Serbia and Georgia to visit the growers and sold Ukrainian fruit into the Netherlands for them last year, which did well."
This year so far there have not been not huge volumes, but Will is confident they will make it work.
Demand for blueberries is quite stable through the year, they have become a commodity and are eaten as a snack.
"This week, you would have expected a big demand, but it has kind of flattened. The consumer demand is there, but retailers need to be able to achieve the right price point before doing promotions. The reality is that growers don't need to shift big volumes at low prices at the moment."
For more information:
William Hill
Colina Fruits
Tel: (+44) 07545 019 561
[email protected]
www.colinafruits.com