Information for fruit and vegetables business in CIS
Ukraine: vegetable prices up due to snow blockade
Abundant snowfall in Ukraine has made serious changes in schedule of fruit and vegetable shipments to supermarket chains and food markets in almost all territory of the country, according to Fruit-Inform. Yesterday, January 18, the Ukrainian authorities have restricted road traffic in Mykolaiv, Odessa, Kirovohrad and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts. In connection with that, wholesale companies and retail chains now are unable to replenish their stocks in time, while middlemen and farmers able to ship their produce have started raising their prices.
However, the price growth is still of declarative character, as supermarket chains do not hurry with raising purchase prices.
«Now we are selling those volumes of vegetables, which have been purchased last week», says a purchasing manager at one of the largest Ukrainian supermarket chains. «We still do not plan to raise purchase prices, as we are limited in possibility to raise retail prices due to low paying capacity of our buyers. However, if a snow blockade is active until the end of this week, we will most likely be forced to purchase vegetables at higher prices and correspondingly raise prices for end consumers».
We would remind you that prices of traditional vegetables are record high now in Ukraine. Their current levels are 2-3 times as high as registered a year before and the highest in Eastern Europe.