Information for fruit and vegetables business in CIS
Price collapse in Ukrainian market for greenhouse cucumbers due to Crimea blockade
Stop of shipments to Crimea has resulted in the price collapse in the Ukrainian market for greenhouse cucumbers, according to Fruit-Inform. Current prices in farms and at wholesale markets in the southern and central regions take just a half – a third of those fixed several days ago.
Supermarket chains and wholesale middlemen have reduced their purchase prices by 30-40% just over a day. Growers are now able to sell high-quality cucumbers at no higher than UAH 3.00-3.50/kg (EUR 0.13-0.15/kg), and middlemen at food markets in the southern regions are ready to ship their produce at UAH 1.50-2.00/kg (EUR 0.06-0.08/kg). It should be noted that the lowest over the past 5 years prices for Ukrainian cucumbers in September were registered just in 2012: UAH 2.00-2.50/kg.
A dramatic fall in prices is connected with several factors with the ban on imports introduced by Russia and Crimea blockade as the main ones. Due to Russia's embargo, farmers have both lost direct access to the largest external target market for fresh cucumbers and had to reduce their sales to processors as the Russian market was also closed for Ukrainian canned fruits and vegetables. Stop of shipments to Russia through Crimea has immediately affected prices: they started going down right after the blockade. Moreover, weather conditions have also had a negative effect on the supply and demand balance as Ukrainian hothouse farms' cucumber ouputs have sharply grown thanks to sunny and warm weather.