Information for fruit and vegetables business in CIS
Sales of canned vegetables stagnating due to overproduction of fresh produce in Ukraine
Ukrainian fruit and vegetable processors seriously suffer from overproduction of fresh vegetables in the country. An advantage of low prices for raw produce cannot compensate a sharp decrease in sales of canned produce. For the present, there is no increase in sales rates expected before the New Year holidays. Processors explain almost no demand for their produce by an abundance of inexpensive fresh vegetables in the market and overall decrease in households' paying capacity. In addition, households has already canned significant volumes of fruits and vegetables themselves this year.
According to Fruit-Inform, problems with sales were faced also by producers of pickles. In this case, the situation is complicated by a limited shelf life of pickled produce. In the past 3 years, a number of enterprises engaged in pickling was rapidly growing in Ukraine. In this season, they were joined by some farmers who hoped to solve a problem with sales of excess produce in this way. Nevertheless, wholesale companies and retail chains are not willing to purchase large quantities of pickles pleading very low sales of them. Moreover, purchasing prices for pickled and marinaded vegetables fell 1.5-2 times this year. Reduction of prices for pickled cucumbers and tomatoes was the least in comparison with other categories, although the demand for them is considerably lower year-on-year.
More information about prospects in the Ukrainian pickled vegetable sector in the next season will be presented for participants of the Fourth International Conference “Potatoes and Vegetables of Ukraine – 2012”, President Hotel, Kiev, Ukraine, February 16, 2012.
In addition, we would remind you that information about current developments in the Russian and Ukrainian fruit and vegetable markets together with on-line price monitoring, official trade statistics and reliable analytics is available for subscribers of Fruit-Inform Weekly.