Limited quality supply leads to high prices of Spanish fruit

Tholen - "I wouldn't know which fruit we can talk about that is cheap at the moment." Henk Vlaeminck of the Belgian importer Van Dijk Foods sees the prices of imported fruit rising, while consumers are more hesitant to pay a lot for groceries. "Spanish cherries, stone fruit, kiwis or oranges. The fruit is becoming a luxury product. Combined with inflation, we therefore see that sales volumes are considerably lower this year than in previous years." The reason for this lies with many products in the limited supply, according to the trader. "There are very few Spanish cherries, for example, at the moment. Climatic problems mean that very limited volumes are exported. The demand is definitely there, but the market is simply empty. Especially not in good quality. The same applies to the supply from France. For the smaller sizes you now pay about €7.50 per kilo and the thicker ones go for €11.00 over the counter. That's just very expensive." "Moreover, the supermarkets there continue ...