Recently, the fruit market is caught in a “vicious circle” characterized by thriving business and lower prices. Despite the good sale results, the prices of fruits are continually reduced. Why? Many wholesalers at Jiangnan Market indicated that’s due to the bumper harvest of fruits in 2018! The output of both domestically produced and imported fruits reached their peak of recent years. The bumper harvest means that consumers have more choices for fruit varieties, as well as the opportunity to shop around; while for fruit growers and wholesalers, it directly leads to lower prices and thin profits. What’s more, many kinds of fruits face the risk of being unsalable.
A visit to the Jiangnan fruit wholesale market in Guangzhou enables the reporter to easily find that for many categories of fruits, an excessive stock caused a dramatic drop in prices. This drop in prices directly affected both imported fruits and domestic fruits. Among the imported fruits, American cherries are recently affected. In this case of falling prices, taking 28mm-30mm cherry as an example, cherries of this size can be sold up to 730 RMB per 5 KG at the beginning of the month; while the price fell to the current 360 RMB/5 KG, a drop of more than 40%.
It is reported that American cherries are presently the mainstream products in the cherry market, since the domestic Dalian cherries are almost sold out; which means that the decline in the prices of American cherries has little to do with the impact from other producing areas. However, the cherries whose price should have risen met such a price crisis. The cherry wholesaler stated that the problem was mainly caused by “too much stock”.
Another fruit affected is the Peruvian avocado, which monopolizes the market since the Mexican avocados were almost sold-out; recently, due to an abundant supply and the over-maturity of some of the avocados, the prices saw a decline of more than 30%.
In recent days, the price of kiwifruits from Chile have dropped under this impact. According to Mr. Huang, a wholesaler of kiwi fruit, “A few days ago, thekiwifruits from Chile were sold at 120 RMB per package (about 10 KG). The price was even lower recently, and it can only be sold for 100 RMB; some wholesalers even sell at less than 100 RMB (per package).”
The sales of domestic fruit are not more optimistic. Mr. Liu, a wholesaler in the Jiangnan fruit market, told reporters that the wholesale price of litchis which could have reached 3.5 RMB per half KG has fallen below 2 RMB. In the current situation, “Some fruit growers would rather let their litchis rot in the ground than to invest human and financial resources to pick litchi.” It’s not a prosperous year for Hainan-made jackfruit: the price has also been reduced by nearly half compared to previous years (at present, jackfruit is priced at about 1.6 RMB per half KG).
The copyright of this article is belonged to Easywei Marketing & Consulting Co, Ltd. Easywei is a leading integrated marketing consulting firm in China specialized in food and agricultural products consulting business, and used to work for ASOEX and OXEC Beijing to promote fruits from Chile and fruits from Peru. For more information about Easywei, please look up our website: www.easywei.cn
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